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The Agile Compass

How to create high-performing teams, innovative products and lead thriving businesses? The Agile Compass shares hands-on knowledge from 20+ years of experience in industries worldwide. Matthias is a Silicon Valley veteran and has been awarded the Agile Thought Leader award in 2022. His unique approach focuses on the human side of creating thriving organizations.

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Why Do Organizations Want to “Go Agile”? – A Brutally Honest Look at Real and Misguided Motivations—for Coaches and Decision-Makers

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hey Reader, why do companies want to be "agile"? Did you ever ask that question? What were the replies you got? And did you do the "5 whys" to dig deeper? I've seen so many who wanted to be agile for all the wrong reasons. I believe our job as coaches is to solve their REAL problems for them. Here's a little article about why companies want to be agile… Why Do Organizations Want to “Go Agile”? A Brutally Honest Look at Real and Misguided Motivations—for...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hello Reader, respect is not a fluffy add-on – respect is the infrastructure on which high performance runs. Let's look at the busiest train station in the world to learn for creating high performing organizations. Respect: The Missing Ingredient in Your Agile Transformation Why respect isn’t just a soft value — but your system’s only real chance at speed. Shinjuku Station is the busiest railway station in the word. 4 million people passing through it every...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hello Reader, today is about learned helplessness in teams. A concept crucial to understand and know how to remedy for agile coaches, scrum masters, and anyone pushing for change. Learned Helplessness: The Hidden Barrier to Agility Why your team isn’t stepping up—and what you can do about it. You’ve probably seen it. You’re working with a team that’s been told: “You are now self-managing!” Freedom! Autonomy! Accountability! And then… nothing. They wait to be...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hi Reader, Ever notice how, deep down, a lot of us still believe work is supposed to hurt? Let me add my perspective from 25 years in the trenches of corporate (and start-up) productivity. Before we start: Here is another article I wrote a few weeks ago. It nicely complements today's newsletter by posing the question: Does a 60-Hour Workweek Make You a Productivity Beast—or Just Burnt Out? Thanks for supporting my work by being a paying subscriber of The...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hello Reader, provocative opinion: AI will increase the demand for skilled software engineers.Why I think that? It's in the article below 👇 Thanks for supporting my work by being a paying subscriber of The Agile Compass! 🙏 The AI Developer Apocalypse Might Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Software Engineering There’s a lot of anxiety in the air. AI is coming for developers. Coding assistants are getting smarter by the month. Junior roles are vanishing....

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Enjoying cherry blossom in Tokyo – and collecting agile and leadership stories for you. Hello Reader, last month I visited business partners in Tokyo and Osaka. This Japan trip – my first to the country ever – inspired several agile and leadership articles I want to share with you. Two decades as an agile practitioner and coach, and I can still get excited and learn! These stories help see agile and leadership practices from a new perspective.Here is a first...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.– Lauren Bacall Hello Reader, predicting the future is hard – especially today. Yet it's crucial for a company's survival. How can we prepare our teams, our products, our business models for the markets of tomorrow? That's what today's article is about. Predicting the Future: Lessons from the Video Streaming Industry and Beyond In 2004, during my Silicon Valley days, my mission...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hello Reader, do you know a low performer? I wanna challenge the notion of "low performer" as a label for a person. Because it's not only utterly false, but it also prevents us from solving the real performance problems. If we want more articles about high performance, read these: Want High-Performing Teams? Focus on Motivation That Lasts 💪 How to motivate people: Autonomy, mastery & purpose Boost productivity: Manage your energy, not your time! ⚡️ How...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Sy Liebergot at NASA (source: NASA) Hello Reader, do you know the story of Apollo 13? Well, you might not know about the role distributed leadership played in saving the astronaut's lives… You might also wanna check out last week's article on Story Points, Velocity, and the Outdated View of Human Nature Now to Apollo 13: How Apollo 13 Proved the Power of Distributed Leadership April 13, 1970 Apollo 13 is gliding silently toward the moon when, suddenly, the...

The Agile Compass Matthias Orgler Hello Reader, why is velocity still so abused and misunderstood? That‘s what today‘s article is about: Story Points, Velocity, and the Outdated View of Human Nature “How many story points do you complete per sprint?” “What’s your team’s velocity?” “Why isn’t it improving?” If you’ve heard these questions before, you know they’re usually well-intentioned – but built on a dangerous misunderstanding: the idea that velocity is a performance metric. It’s not. As...