This page offers my original papers and guides, my most frequently shared technical materials (TOOLBOX tags), and links to foundational material created by others.
Publications is a shorter list, focused on my main writings. WorkSpace is a deep, wiki archive of working notes.
Inviting Agility is the New Way of Working
- Why Invite Agility? – Foundations for Inviting Agility
- Open Space, Inviting Leadership, and the Agile Manifesto – Key Insights
- Open Space, Inviting Agility, Enterprise Scrum – Agile.FM Podcast Interview
- What is Business Agility? – Forbes’ Steve Denning (short video/slides) on the preeminence of customers, small teams and networks
- Case Story: Walmart – rapid, global, agile transformation inside of a corporate giant
- Dare Real Agile Podcast, with Alexandre-Frédéric Joly, connecting Open Space and Enterprise Scrum.
- TOOLBOX: Operating Agility in Scaling Startups – David Sacks’ (PayPal, Yammer) “Cadence” framework is a brilliant, practical business agility case story. See also the Jason Calacanis podcast interview.
Open Space Gets People Moving
- What is Open Space? US West Event Video | Explanation Video (3min) | Time-Lapse Video (2min)
- Inviting Leadership Guide – all my most frequently shared Open Space papers and tools in a single document (includes executive summary, guided tour, invitation writing, script, templates, checklists, and other resources for facilitators and meeting sponsors)
- OpenSpaceWorld.org – the leading global OS website (I started in 1999)
- Brief User’s Guide – Harrison Owen’s original “how to” paper
- Case Story: Strategic Conversation [pdf] – OST for customer-centered strategy development
- Case Story: Adaptive Challenges – a simple, direct approach to the hardest issues
- More Case Stories – some favorite, frequently-shared Open Space stories, see also Proceedings samples.
- SMARTer Agile – brief slide deck, based on Sandra Walsh’s OpenXP for technical requirements gathering in Open Space, applicable to any strategic roadmapping work
- Open Space Technology: A User’s Non-Guide – commentary on the inner game of Opening Space, edited from contributions by 37 practitioners around the world
- TOOLBOX: Required Conditions, Basic Preparation and Working Mechanisms – how to think about hosting an open space meeting (via openspaceworld.org)
- TOOLBOX: Opening Space Online – what we’ve learned about inviting and supporting self-organized work in online platforms
- TOOLBOX: Open Space Proceedings Samples + Templates – useful as case stories and as documentation templates
- TOOLBOX: Ongoing Open Space – rules for ongoing OS, developed at University of Kentucky Rural Health Center, posted in my wiki workspace notes.
- TOOLBOX: (forthcoming) After Open Space – how to turn conference proceedings into strategic roadmap and ongoing open/agile practice
- TOOLBOX: Extensive Open Space practice notes – indexed in my workspace wiki over many years
Kanban Makes Work Visible and Optimizes Flow
- Personal Kanban – a great way to get started and understand the practice
- Essential Kanban Condensed – go deeper and apply to any kind of work
Scrum Makes Delivering Value Iterative and Dependable
- The Scrum Guide: The Rules of the Game – the definitive guide, famously brief 16 pages
- The New New Product Development Game – Harvard Business Review, inspiration for Scrum
- SCRUM: Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (Amazon) – by Scrum originator, Jeff Sutherland
- Scrum at Scale Guide – Jeff Sutherland’s take on scaling scrum
Enterprise Scrum Visualizes and Agilizes at Scale
- Enterprise Scrum for Business Agility Guide – what is Enterprise Scrum? …and how to use it to agilize anything
- Agilize Anything (Even City Government) with Enterprise Scrum – slides from Global Scrum Gathering workshop presentation
- Enterprise Scrum for Software Scaling – overview I wrote for Scaling for Dummies, see also ES InfoGraphic
- What is EnterpriseScrum? – papers and videos by ES originator, Mike Beedle
- TOOLBOX: Canvas Templates – two basic canvas formats, to strategize, plan and execute any kind of work, at any scale, with a number of adaptations for getting started.
- TOOLBOX: Overlapping Cadences – David Sacks’ (PayPal, Yammer) “Cadences” framework is the “timing” that’s implied in Mike Beedle’s Enterprise Scrum canvases.
- TOOLBOX: User Story Mapping – make product thinking and customer experience visible. see also StoryMap and UserStory quick reference guides.
- TOOLBOX: Draw Toast – quick team exercise as introduction to visualizing work, see also Story Mapping below.
Participative Design Reshapes Organization Structure for Agility
- TOOLBOX: What Can Agile Learn from Participative Democracy? – short slide deck intro to Participative Design, including Six Criteria and Skills Matrix evaluation tools.
- Constantly Trying to Change? Why not Change to be Adaptive? – PD Intro [more]
- Participative Design Notes – quick reference for six criteria, workshop steps, etc.
- Emery and Trist Environments – understanding the context we work in
- CaseStory: Trist Long Wall Method, c. 1950 – the earliest modern, industrial, self-managing teams – we’re still up against the same human needs and challenges
More on Agile Strategy, Structure, Practice and Mindset
- Lean Start-up, Reis – [book] [notes]
- Business Model Canvas, Osterwalder/Pigneur – [book download] [video] [step-by-step]
- This is Lean, Modig/Ahlstrom [book] [notes]
- Zone to Win, Moore – [book] [notes]
- Radical Management, Denning – [book] [notes]
- BOSSA Nova for Company-wide Agility, Eckstein/Buck – [book] [video]
- Distributed Teams, Rothman/Kilby – advanced agile practice for working remotely [book]
- Design Thinking – rapid, customer-centric, prototype learning – [Stanford/Resources]
- Beyond Budgeting – financial flexibility for driving business adaptation – [principles]
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Goldratt – [book] [notes]
Inviting Facilitation
- TOOLBOX: Clean Language – [notes]
- TOOLBOX: Liberating Structures, Lipmanowicz and McCandless [book/guides]
- TOOLBOX: Lean Coffee – [overview]
- TOOLBOX: Dialogue (per David Bohm) – [overview] [training workshop notes]
If a living system [organism, organization or ecosystem] is unhealthy, the way to make it more healthy is to reconnect it with more of itself. –Francisco Varela