Introduction

I’d like to thank Johanna Rothmann for providing the final nudge I needed to move from “thinking about blogging” to “starting a blog”.  We were at the final morning of the recent Rally On conference, and she had come over to offer some encouraging words after watching me somewhat nervously speak about servant leadership for executives on the preceding afternoon.   Much of the conversation revolved around why I didn’t blog or tweet, and 10 minutes later I’d run out of excuses.

Some background perspective

After spending my formative agile years in the traditional “small, innovative team” side of Agile, a period back in the large waterfall program world ignited my passion for understanding how to apply agile at scale, and since my return to agile it has been the focus of my endeavours. 

Between research, sharing with other agilistas and learning from my students and clients I have come to the belief that it boils down to two things:

• Establishing agile culture at the executive and middle management levels
• Pragmatic and situational adaptation of agile practices to find the right balance between the formality and process required at scale and the innovation enabled by self-organisation.

Through this blog, my hope is to share insights gleaned from the application of this belief and put a little back into a community that has taught me so much over the 12 years of my Agile journey.