This year, I’ve run two experiments to get a glimpse at the role that LLMs will play in organizational development. In my first experiment, I replaced an| Viktor Cessan - Enterprise Agile, and Product Coaching
Financial discipline is back. And with it, many roles are disappearing, among them, the Agile Coaches. This isn’t because Agile itself is failing—but because capital is expensive, and companies now demand real returns on every role. It’s not just about cutting costs—it’s about making smarter...| Viktor Cessan | Scaling & Execution for Product & Tech Leaders
Agile coaches often get caught up in the excitement of solving the next big problem or frustration when things don’t match their ideals. I’ve been there myself. Early in my career, I relied heavily on intuition, and was impulsive until I learned how to observe more deliberately through Esther Derby, Johanna Rothman, and Jerry Weinberg’s PSL-training. My coaching practice transformed further when I got my ICF-ACC and started using a coach log—a tool I now rely on to track my interventi...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
The Challenge: Addressing Shallow Communication in a Newly Re-Missioned Team In 2019, I worked with a feature team that was about to re-mission, and that would receive expanded responsibilities. The re-missioning necessitated a wider range of skills which resulted in the addition of three new team members. Initial Team Structure and Challenges Prior to the re-missioning, the team consisted of seven members, an Engineering Manager (EM), and a Product Manager (PM). Despite having worked togethe...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
Controversial topics are topics that elicit strong emotions, have little or no effort invested into resolution, and unequal participation. Whether you’re a coach or manager, recognizing controversial topics is crucial because dealing with controversial topics is expensive, difficult, and painful to all involved parties. But because controversial topics are an inherent aspect of working in large product and tech companies, where diverse teams and multiple layers of leadership coexist, you ne...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
A while back, I coached two management teams that were exploring their contexts. The first management team looked at their organizational setup from the point of view of Team Topologies. The other management team was mapping their departments stakeholders, their needs, and how they best ought to collaborate with them. As both teams made progress in visualizing their context, their visualizations got messier and messier to the point that they became overwhelming. “I think I’m doing somethi...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
Anyone doing Agile Coaching long enough will inevitably find themself in a situation coaching teams that: do not want to be coached. should not be coached. cannot be coached. do not respond well Your coaching. The differences between these situations are significant. Yet it is difficult for many coaches to understand what situation they are in. One reason for that is the similarities in how these situations display themselves: You’re being challenged directly There’s poor meeting attendan...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
Earlier this fall, I looked out my daughter’s window and saw what must have been close to 100 spiderwebs. I often gaze out her window as it’s my favorite view in the house–a natural, perfectly groomed forest. But I’d never seen even one spiderweb out there before. Unique viewing conditions The spiderwebs had of course always been there. But under normal circumstances, the air outside is dry. And there’s not a lot of angled sunlight, so I couldn’t see the spiderwebs. The spiderwebs...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
I recently held a talk on Agile By Example about the importance of agile coaches making informed interventions when coaching systems and agile, and that many coaches are making dogmatic interventions. I argued, and still do, that more often than not, agile coaches and scrum masters fall short in their intervention process. They intervene when they ought not to, and they skip interventions that could have a significant and positive impact. I want to make some clarifications in this post, mainl...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...
We speak a lot about interventions when nudging teams along their team effectiveness journeys. But what are we really aiming for here? Interventions alone and just for the sake of doing something are not enough. We need our interventions to also be strategically placed at the right leverage...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching
For the past six months of working from home, I’ve been experimenting with practices that make remote meetings more effective particularly when it comes to balancing speaking time between participants. Those of you who have facilitated, or even just participated, in in-person meetings and workshops know how difficult it can be to ensure that everyone even gets an opportunity to speak, let alone to achieve equal speaking time between the participants. The post 10 Virtual Table Tips That Make...| Context specific agile, product, and systems coaching – I do Agile and Orga...