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The danger of cc and reply-all
I got an email the other day, adressed to me with a mailing list of all the other Product Managers from our site in cc, that started with the words: “Actually, that’s completely wrong.” It was referring to my previous mail to a small group where I had made a comment about the readiness of…
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Recurring impediments
Last week I wrote about impediments, and making sure you go through them every day at the daily scrum standup. As I was discussing blockers with my team over the past week I noticed (again) that most of these impediments are recurring… they seem to crop up nearly every sprint. Scrum teaches us about the…
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Change the unchangeable
In an environment where so many people avoid decisions, shy away from responsibility and avoid asking hard questions, the people who do this well stand out. Shake a few trees. Take a risk and raise a tough issue. What’s really stopping you? What are you afraid of? Politics? Don’t want to make an enemy? The…
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What’s getting in your way?
The daily scrum standup is about answering three very simple questions: What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do today? Do you have any blockers? All three questions are important, but you know what… this is another great case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s the…
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Scrum is not a solution to your problems
Scrum won’t solve all your development problems. Even if you implement 100% of the Scrum textbook (and most companies don’t), it won’t fix a broken development environment overnight. Scrum process just helps to bring your problems to the surface so you can see them and deal with them. It’s all about exposing problems and issues,…
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Why the Product Owner is not the Scrum Master
Despite what is often the case in software organisations, a Product Owner is not a Scrum Master. To me, the two roles are both absolutely critical to the success of a scrum team, but they are not only very different, but quite often contradictory. The Scrum Master protects the team from interruptions and blockers and…
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Shooting the messenger
Sometimes you have to choose between two or more bad options. Often the perfect choice is a luxury that you can’t afford. The question is how you respond to this choice, and how you communicate it to your team. I believe you have two options: You can act purely as a messenger, or You can…
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Bienvenue!
Welcome to my blog. My name is Will. I grew up on the east coast of Australia, studied and started my career in Sydney, and 2 years ago I followed my girl and my heart to Berlin, Germany. I now work for Nokia. I am the Product Owner of Nokia’s web social location platform, maps.ovi.com. …