A lot has been written about the pitfalls of Agile, and the “secret ingredients” needed for Agile to work (a high-seniority team, mature engineering practices, frequent communication, psychological safety, a Product Owner included in the team, etc.). Each of these angles are true, to a certain extent. But I think that they miss (or underestimate) an essential aspect of communication that makes or breaks a good team: trust. Low-trust contexts are slow The importance of trust goes beyond what is usually understood as Agile (Scrum, SAFe, etc. Read more...

The story tends to always start the same way: Someone is bored of their corporate job and decides to start their own company. This individual has likely worked a long time in their corporate job(s) and has a good understanding of the business domain. But not only that, over time, they have accrued quite a decent amount of connections that makes the “let’s start our own thing” seem very viable. The first few customers appear to be just around the corner! Read more...