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Hawthorne Effect Coaching Dilemma
The Hawthorne Effect is something I wrote about over a year ago. Previously as a Project Management Adviser and now as an Enterprise Agile Coach, I’ve seen it numerous times. To all those currently...
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What is Agile, anyway?
The parable Ever heard the story about the blind men and an elephant? In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men touch an elephant. Each man feels a different part, but only one part, such...
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Agile Project Leader Job
Some Just Don’t Get It I’ve seen way too many job postings in the last year, asking for Agile Project Managers. These postings are basically Project Manager positions with some Agile language thrown...
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Retrospective Shades of Gray
The Retrospective I love retrospectives. It doesn’t matter if it’s an informal process that occurs naturally as team members interact or it is a formal process that occurs at the end of a meeting, an...
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PMI-ACP Numbers So Far
Tomorrow, the June 2012 edition of PMI Today will be formally available. Before that happens, I wanted to give a progress report on the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner numbers. Since the...
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What is Fist of Five?
Why It doesn’t matter if I’m teaching a class or coaching a team. When the moment comes, I need a quick way for a team to come to a decision. Why should the team decide and not me? From the seven...
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Oh the Places You’ll Go!
My nephew just graduated from college. As I enjoyed a bottle of “Graduation Ale” home brew, at his graduation party, I noticed a quote from Dr. Seuss printed on the label. This quote is applicable to...
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How my Zombie PM Book Survived
It’s been over a year since I published my book, Zombie Project Management, to the Amazon Kindle store. It was fun writing it and discovering the process of publishing a book. So, you can image my...
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Sneetches and Agile Training
This morning I read a tweet offering a 100% guarantee to pass the corresponding Agile exam. Offering such a guarantee is such BS and insulting to our craft. Reading the tweet sounded something right...
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15 Days
Only 15 more days Will the world end early? Will the zombie apocalypse begin? What will happen? Image Source: Pictofigo Related posts: Black Friday & More How my Zombie PM Book Survived PDCA and...
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Back from the Islands
The 2012 Huether Island Vacation has come and gone. To use it as an opportunity to grow, I wanted to do things outside my comfort zone. What qualifies? Let’s start with everything that has anything...
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New PMI Member Benefits
Remember the American Express slogan, Membership Has Its Privileges? Well, PMI is working on providing more membership privileges…and benefits for your $129 a year membership dues. What would you think...
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Joined LeadingAgile
I am happy to report that I have just joined the family at LeadingAgile. LeadingAgile is dedicated to solving the challenges associated with Agile in larger, more complex enterprises. They provide...
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Operating Outside Your Comfort Zone
Last week, I facilitated an Agile game, with the goal to increase product delivery throughput. At the beginning of each iteration, I would remind the team “The seven rules of the game are…“. Upon...
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New PMI-ACP Classes Announced
I am happy to report that LeadingAgile is ramping up its Public Training Program. We will now offer regularly scheduled public training classes in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Early bird...
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Agile or Waterfall (Podcast)
Back in late 2010, I was features on the Talking Work podcast. Then in early 2011, I appeared at the WorkOut 2011 conference. Because Ty Kiisel and Raechel Logan were such gracious hosts each time, I...
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Glass Half Full
This morning, I tried to explain a very important concept to my son. I filled a glass with water to the half-way point. I then asked him if the glass was half empty or half full. This all came about...
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Defining The Qualified User Story
Regardless of the client I work with, the teams seem to initially struggle with understanding how big (or small) a User Story is, relative to Epics, Features, and Tasks. It doesn’t help when they...
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Chasing After The Latest Fad or Evolving
This last weekend, I had an interesting exchange on the PMIWDC LinkedIn Group discussions board. This healthy exchange of viewpoints came about from the following message: In June, PMPs numbers are...
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Speaking at the PMI Global Congress
Well, the wait is finally over. My paper, “Traffic Lights to Burndowns, an introduction to Visual Management Systems” was selected for presentation at the PMI Global Congress being held in Vancouver,...
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Virtue of Humanity & Emotional Intelligence
I was updating my Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP) Training slide on Emotional Intelligence and thought of the relationship it has with our humanity. A few clicks later, I found myself reading a...
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Agile on Non-Software Projects
Regardless of where I coach or teach, there is always someone who approaches me and says something like, “Agile is great for software projects but what about projects that aren’t software related?”...
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My Lesson in Process Improvement
Regardless of your organization and goals, everyone is trying to do things better. I commonly hear about management asking its people to do more faster, often with less. One major mistake I see time...
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Agile 101 – Presented at the PM Symposium
I want to thank everyone for coming out to the PMI Washington D.C. Project Management Symposium. It was a great crowd. The ballroom was full and I was told there were up to 400 people in the room for...
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Favorite Project Management Quotes
There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t hear some awesome quote or analogy. I put as many as I can into my mental back pocket, hoping for an opportunity to pull one out at a moments notice. When...
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PMI Global Congress Presentation on VMS
I am back from the PMI Global Congress in Vancouver, British Columbia. My lack of fancy pants went pretty much unnoticed. I brought plenty of energy (and coffee) to my session and it appears people...
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Demonstrating Leadership
As Hurricane Sandy approaches the East Coast, we’re already feeling its impact. You can’t find batteries, milk, toilet paper, or bread anywhere. The only thing I went out looking for yesterday was...
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PMI Puerto Rico Simposio Anual
Imagine barely missing the Nor’easter up in Connecticut, only to land in sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico 24 hours later for the PMI Puerto Rico Simposio Anual. That was me last week. My time in Puerto Rico...
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New Scrum Team Challenges
A while ago, I published a post titled: Simple Cheat Sheet to Sprint Planning Meeting. Though I understand every team is different, I thought it would be helpful to those who are new to agile...
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Value Stream for Business Travelers
The more I travel, the more I find myself observing how business travel (particularly flying) is a lot like application development. The flow of travelers (business value) are processed through a...
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My Perspective on Remote Work
The proclamation by Marissa Mayer last month, informing Yahoo employees that working from home is no longer an option, really seemed to bring an important conversation front and center. The memo that...
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Getting Teams to Deliver Predictably
As recently as this week, I’ve been involved in conversations with customers about how we can help make their teams deliver more predictably. How can they meet commitments on all levels of the...
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Real World Kaizen in Action
In October 2012 Superstorm Sandy hit New York City. The results are still being felt today. Relief agencies struggled to keep up with the demand for food. Six months later, people in Rockaways are...
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Kumbaya Yourself into an Agile Enterprise
Best quote of Agile 2013 award goes to Dennis Stevens of LeadingAgile. In a well received session by Dennis and Mike Cottmeyer, they discussed the topic of gaining support for a sustainable Agile...
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New Agile Training Classes Announced
Though I’ve been doing Enterprise Agile Coaching with LeadingAgile for over a year now, I haven’t been doing a lot of training (or blogging). I’ve been sticking to agile transformation work and the...
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How to be Successful with Agile at Scale
Ever asked yourself how you could be successful with Agile at scale? Let me show you how we’ve done it at LeadingAgile. In this one hour session that I presented to the PM Symposium in Washington DC, I...
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A Lack of a Shared Understanding
Earlier this week, I facilitated a backlog refinement meeting. In the past, the team was used to all of the requirements being completed (in advance) by the analysts. The delivery team would then...
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Brain Teaser With a Hidden Lesson
What is the number of the parking space containing the car? I was on Google+ last night when I came across a brain teaser. It took me about 20 seconds to figure it out. On average, I’m finding others...
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Cheat Sheet for Backlog Refinement
What is it? The purpose of backlog refinement (grooming) is to make improvements to the product backlog. Though there is no official ceremony detailed in the Scrum Guide, the activity of refining the...
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Barriers to Agile Adoption
We’ve all seen it happen. Though we try to show organizations the benefits of using a mature agile delivery framework, we still run into roadblocks. Though the status quo is killing their organization,...
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Limit your Holiday WIP with Personal Kanban
I’m asked on a regular basis how Agile or Lean practices can be applied during the holidays. Let’s face it, we have a limited amount of time and todo lists as long as our arms. Truth be told, people...
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My Personal Kanban submission for Agile 2014
I am happy to announce I submitted a workshop titled ”At home and work, how to get more stuff done. An introduction to Personal Kanban“. After asking people to provide comments, I was informed that...
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Bad UX on a Menu
I took the family to Popeyes this weekend. I’m not the fast food type so this is about as close as it gets for me. I’m also not one who eats biscuits or drinks a lot of soda. Why eat at Popeyes, you...
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Agile Engine Metaphor
I recently published a post over at the LeadingAgile website. I compared and agile transformation to a carburetor engine. It was based on an interesting exchange I had on Google+ about Agile process...
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Product Owner and the Scrum Team
On March 11, 2014, I presented a talk to IIBA Baltimore on the topic of the Product Owner and the Scrum Team. I have to say, this was an awesome bunch of people to talk with. You know you’re at the...
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Derek Huether Presenting at Agile 2014 in Orlando, Florida
It’s official. I’m going to be presenting at Agile2014 in Orlando this summer. My 75-minute session will be part of an Learning track that is targeted at anyone who struggles with getting their work...
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Top 10 Negative Personas of a Daily Standup Meeting
All Agile teams should be holding a daily standup meeting. Don’t think of it as a daily planning meeting. Think of it as a daily opportunity to have a shared understanding of what is getting done and...
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Tips to Break Into Project Management
Geoff’s Request Professor of project management at Durham College, Geoff Crane, just published an ebook titled 52 Tips to Break Into Project Management. Back in early May, he told me he was compiling...
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Lean Coffee Baltimore
What is it? Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting...
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Busy Summer
This summer, things come in three’s. One I’ll be hosting Lean Coffee Baltimore on July 11 at Mad City Coffee. >> Register Here >> Two I’ll be presenting at Agile2014 in Orlando on August 1....
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