Shaun Dicker’s delivery leadership blog shares honest, practitioner writing on flow, modern engineering practice, leading teams, and putting AI to work across the software delivery lifecycle.
Topics
Latest writing
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Story Points and AI: Measure Flow and Outcomes Instead
AI makes estimating development effort unstable, so story points and velocity mislead; measure flow (cycle time, work item age, throughput) and outcomes (quality, customer impact) instead. Continue reading…
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Multi-Supplier Delivery with Flight Levels
Flight Levels coordinates multi-supplier delivery by adding one thin layer above the teams: a single board, cadence, and work-in-progress cap, so nobody changes how they work. Continue reading…
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Is Servant Leadership Dead? Service With Standards
No, servant leadership is not dead; research shows it still boosts team performance and trust, but it works only when service means honesty and high standards, not niceness. Continue reading…
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Servant Leadership for Delivery Leads: A Practical Guide
Servant leadership for delivery leads means putting the team’s needs first by building trust, empowering people and leading by example to improve team performance and deliver value. Continue reading…
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Types of Agile Methodology: Which One Fits Your Team? Scrum, Kanban or SAFe?
Not sure which agile method suits your team? We break down Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP and scaling frameworks in plain English — no jargon, just clarity. Continue reading…
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Engineering Mindset: Why Focusing on Failure Matters
Explore why focusing on failure is a game-changer with insights from Dave Farley. From Apollo missions to everyday code, learn how anticipating failures shapes reliable software. Continue reading…
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Effective Platform Engineering: Benefits & Missteps
Effective platform engineering empowers developers by raising concepts to a higher level of abstraction, rather than hiding complexity or imposing restrictive defaults that reduce developer autonomy. Continue reading…
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Continuous Improvement Culture: A Delivery Lead’s Guide
A delivery lead builds a continuous improvement culture through an agile mindset: questioning the status quo, gathering feedback, sharing metrics openly, encouraging experimentation, and treating failures as learning opportunities. Continue reading…
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Agile Mindset: What It Is and Why It Matters
An agile mindset is a way of thinking that treats change, challenges, and setbacks as chances to learn, adapt, and improve rather than as threats or obstacles. Continue reading…
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What Is an Agile Coach? Benefits & How to Hire
An agile coach teaches and guides software teams to apply agile principles, helping them collaborate, self-organise, improve continuously, and remove obstacles that slow progress towards project goals. Continue reading…
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CLEAR Goals for Agile Teams: Beyond SMART Goals
CLEAR goals (Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable and Refinable) suit agile teams better than SMART goals because they can be adjusted as the team learns more. Continue reading…
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What is Kanban? Card, Board, System or Method?
Kanban is a card, a board, a system and a method: a visual, pull-based way to manage work that limits work in progress to improve flow. Continue reading…
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Productive Meeting Agenda: 2 Tips to Fix Your Meetings
To make a meeting productive, give it two things: a clear desired outcome and a list of topics and activities, then share it as the agenda beforehand. Continue reading…
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Project Manager Personality: Do You Have What It Takes?
There is no single “right” personality to be a great project manager. Introverts and extroverts alike can succeed, as long as they know their strengths and adapt. Continue reading…
Tag Cloud
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