“

When to use iterative

development? You should
use iterative development
only on projects that you
want to succeed.

Martin Fowler
Author and programmer
“ Do not be afraid to
make decisions.
Do not be afraid to
make mistakes.

Carly Fiorina
Business coach and politician
“
An organization that
treats its programmers
as morons
will soon have
programmers that
are willing and able
to act like morons only.

Bjarne Stroustrup
Computer scientist
“
Do the planning,
but throw out the plans.

Mary Poppendieck
Lean trainer and author
“
The most effective way
to do it, is to do it.

Amelia Earhart
Aviation pioneer
 , e,
ge ng
an ha
ch g c ne .
al rin o e
Re du ens tim
“
en p t a
p a
ha pe
st
b tice
r g
u
in s
s
J u
r urt
G
e Co
a e m
e
d
r p
S u
B
S.
h
U.
ut R
“
Working always ships
faster than perfect.

Anjuan Simmons
Technology thought leader
“
There is nothing
so useless as
doing efficiently
that which should
not be done at all.

Peter Drucker
Management consultant and author
 “ A vision should be judged
by the clarity of its values,
not the clarity of its
implementation path.

Donella H. Meadows
author of Thinking in Systems: A Primer
“
Sometimes it can
be really freeing to
have identified the
problem... Even
when you're it.

Kristen Belcher
Agile coach
“
The value of an idea
lies in the using of it.

Thomas Edison
Inventor
“
We shouldn’t add features
until they are needed.
Forget just in case;
develop just in time.
Mary Poppendieck
Lean trainer and author
 “ Nothing endures but change.

Heraclitus
Philosopher
“
Stable Velocity.
Sustainable Pace.

Mike Cottmeyer
Agile author and coach
“
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
The secret of getting started is breaking your
complex overwhelming tasks into small
manageable tasks, and then start on the first
one.

Anonymous
“
As ScrumMasters,
we should all value
being great over
being good.

Geoff Watts
Scrum trainer and author
“
It seems that perfection is reached not
when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left
to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Author
“
It is a capital mistake
to theorize before
one has data.

Sherlock Holmes
Scandal in Bohemia
“ If you can dream it, you
can do it.

Walt Disney
Entrepreneur and Animator
 “
Everything stinks
till it’s finished. 

Dr. Seuss
Author and illustrator
“
Right and wrong
cease to be
useful concepts
when you’re talking about
software development.

Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
 Pat Kua

“
Technical leader and author

It doesn’t make sense to measure

anything unless you know why you are
measuring. This is the question to start
with, “What do you care most about?”
“
If you want a
guarantee,
buy a toaster.

Clint Eastwood as
Nick Pulovski in
The Rookie
“
A market is never
saturated with a
good product,
but it is very
quickly saturated
with a bad one.

Henry Ford
Entrepreneur
“
Learn from your
mistakes, be fearless,
and above all have fun.

Julia Child
Chef
“
As a software development
consultant, I’ve never
encountered a successful
software company
(although my sample size is
limited) in which the team
and project leaders were
not technically savvy.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
The important thing is not your process.
The important thing is your process for
improving your process.

Henrik Kniberg
Agile trainer and author
“
We have a propensity to believe in
magic. Anything we can do to align
our conversation around reality is
going to advance us much more.

Don Moen
Agile Coach
“ Most teams aren’t teams at all but merely
collections of individual relationships with
the boss. Each individual vying with the
others for power, prestige, and position.

Douglas McGregor
Management professor
Taylor Swift
Singer-songwriter

Just because you make a

good plan, doesn’t mean
that’s what's gonna happen.
 “ Keep your roadmap simple
and easy to understand.
Capture what really matters;
leave out the rest.

Roman Pichler
Agile trainer and author
“ When forced to work
within a strict framework
the imagination is taxed to
its utmost – and will
produce its richest ideas.
Given total freedom the
work is likely to sprawl.

T. S. Eliot
Poet
“ Simplicity is
the ultimate
sophistication.

Leonardo da Vinci
 “ Always make
new mistakes.

Esther Dyson
Investor and philanthropist
 “ Scrum is like your mother-in-law,
it points out ALL your faults.

Ken Schwaber
Scrum trainer and author
“ Failure is simply the opportunity to
begin again,
this time
more intelligently.

Henry Ford
Entrepreneur
 “ As a general rule of thumb,
when benefits are not
quantified at all,
assume there aren’t any.

Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Software development authors
“
This indispensable
first step to getting
what you want
is this:
Decide
what you want.

Ben Stein
Actor
“
A true natural
servant
automatically
responds to
any problem by
listening first.

Lyssa Adkins
Agile coach and author
“
Anyone who has
never made a
mistake has never
tried anything new.

Albert Einstein
“ That which is a feature to
a component team is a
task to a feature team.

Ken Rubin
Agile author and trainer
“
Be honest –
Without objectivity
and honesty,
the project team
is set up for failure,
even if developing
iteratively.

Ian Spence and Kurt Bittner

Agile authors
“
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable,
but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

Chinese Proverb
“ Software is the most malleable product.
Companies need to use this
characteristics to their competitive
advantage, and sticking to traditional
waterfall development negates this
advantage.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
It’s not the customer’s
job to solve their own
problems. It’s your job
to ask them the right
questions.

Melissa Perri
Author of Escaping the Build Trap
“
The more elaborate
our means of communication,
the less we communicate.

Joseph Priestley
Theologian
 “
Everything is vague to a degree
you do not realize ‘till you have
tried to make it precise.

Bertrand Russell
Philosopher
“
(In software) Speed
is safety... the slower
you go, the more
dangerously you
wobble.

Charity Majors
Co-Founder and engineer, Honeycomb
“
Scrum without automation is like driving
a sports car on a dirt track – you won’t
experience the full potential,
you will get frustrated, and you will
probably end up blaming the car…

Ilan Goldstein
Scrum trainer and author
 “ As an Agile coach, you don’t
need to have all the answers;
it takes time and a few
experiments to hit on
the right approach.

Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley

Agile trainers and authors
“
Innovation is a
bottoms-up,
decentralized, and
unpredictable thing,
but that doesn’t
mean it cannot be
managed.

Eric Ries
Author, The Lean Startup
“
Plans are worthless,
but planning is
everything.

Dwight Eisenhower
General and President
 “
In XP, we don’t
divide and conquer.
We conquer and
divide.
First we make
something that
works, then we bust
that up and solve
the little parts.
Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
“
People, not methodologies or
tools, make projects successful.

Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory

Authors of Agile Testing
“ Done is better
than perfect.

Sheryl Sandberg
Author and Facebook executive
“
After working for some years in the
domains of large, multisite, and
offshore development, we have
distilled our experience and advice
down to the following:
Don’t do it.

Bas Vodde and Craig Larman

Agile trainers and authors
 “ First-time product owners
need time, trust, and support
to grow into their new role.

Roman Pichler
Agile trainer and author
“
If you tell people where to go,
but not how to get there,
you’ll be amazed by the results.

George S. Patton
General
 “
Success is not final,
failure is not fatal:
it is the courage
to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister
“
If you define the
problem correctly,
you almost have
the solution.

Steve Jobs
Apple Co-Founder
“
We define an agile tester this way:
a professional tester who embraces change,
collaborates well with both technical and
business people, and understands the
concept of using tests to document
requirements and drive development.

Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

Agile trainers and authors
 “ You improvise.
You adapt.
You overcome.

Clint Eastwood as
Sergeant Highway in
Heartbreak Ridge
“ Planning is
a quest for value.

Mike Cohn
Agile trainer and author
“ Our greatest weakness
lies in giving up.
The most certain way to
succeed is always to
try just one more time.

Thomas Edison
Inventor
“
As a rule of thumb,
for every user who
tells you about a
problem, there will be
between 10 and 100
other users who
experienced the same
problem and didn’t
think to get in touch.

Paul Butcher
Software engineering author
“
As human beings,
we are amazingly
adaptable and
creative, yet most
of us work for
companies that
are not.

Gary Hamel
Author
“
To achieve great things,
two things are needed:
a plan, and not quite
enough time.
Leonard Bernstein
Composer and conductor
“
It is not possible to create
interesting things in a constant
hurry or in a regulated way from
nine to five.

Pekka Himanen
Philosopher and author
“ The thing is, Bob,
it’s not that I’m lazy,
it’s that I just don’t care.

Ron Livingston as
Peter Gibbons in
Office Space
“ If everything seems
under control,
you’re not going
fast enough.

Mario Andretti
World Champion Racing Driver
“ Prediction is very difficult,
especially about the future.

Niels Bohr
Physicist
“ To improve is to change;
to be perfect is to change often.

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister
“ Whether you think that
you can, or that you can’t,
you are usually right.

Henry Ford
Entrepreneur
“ Every great product owner
needs a great ScrumMaster.

Roman Pichler
Agile trainer and author
“
The more they
over think the plumbing,
the easier it is
to stop up the drain.

James Doohan as
Scotty in
Star Trek III
 “
It doesn’t matter
how good you are today;
if you’re not better next month,
you’re no longer agile.

Mike Cohn
Agile trainer and author
“
Focus on idle work
not idle workers
to achieve fast,
flexible flow.

Ken Rubin
Agile author and trainer
“ It’s never about
how you start –
it’s always about
how you finish.

Dwayne Johnson
The Rock
“ Remove any
feature, process, or
effort that does not
contribute directly
to the learning you
seek.

Eric Ries
Author, The Lean Startup
“ Agility means that
you are faster than
your competition.
Agile time frames
are measured in
weeks and months,
not years.

Michael Hugos
Agile systems architect
“ The four most important
words for Scrum Masters
are: Let’s ask the team.

Kristen Sammons
Agile evangelist & scrum master
“
We don’t need
an accurate
document.
We need a
shared
understanding.
Jeff Patton
Agile trainer
“ If you have a choice of two things
and can’t decide,
take both.

Gregory Corso
Poet
 “ Agile leaders lead teams,
non-agile ones manage tasks.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“If you have a problem
and to solve it you
need someone else
to change, you don’t
understand your
problem yet.

Lyssa Adkins
Agile coach and author
“ Change is scary, but
complacency is deadly.

Dave Dame
Agile leader
“ Design and programming
are human activities;
forget that and all is lost.

Bjarne Stroustrup
Computer scientist
“
Scrum focuses on being agile
which may (and should) lead to improving.
Kanban focuses on improving,
which may lead to being agile.

Karl Scotland
Agile trainer
“ When we go into that new project,
we believe in it all the way.
We have confidence in
our ability to do it right.

Walt Disney
Entrepreneur and Animator
“ Agile teams produce a continuous
stream of value, at a sustainable pace,
while adapting to the
changing needs of the business.

Elisabeth Hendrickson
Agile author and trainer
 “ People with goals succeed
because they know where
they’re going.

Earl Nightingale
Motivational speaker
“
Metrics are not objective just
because they’re quantitative.

Erika Hall
Author and co-founder of Mule Design
“
Opportunity is
missed by most
people because
it is dressed in
overalls and Thomas Edison
looks like work. Inventor
“
You can’t make decisions based
on fear and the possibility of what
might happen.
Michelle Obama
Attorney, author, and former US First Lady
“
Making work visible
is one of the most
fundamental things
we can do to improve

Dominica DeGrandis
Author of Making Work Visible
“
Agile is all about teams
working together to
produce great software.
As an Agile coach, you
can help your team go
from first steps to
running with Agile to
unleashing their full
Agile potential.

Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley

Agile trainers and authors
 “ No matter what the problem is,
it's always a people problem.

Gerald M. Weinberg
Author
“ A wrong decision is better than
no decision.

James Gandolfini as
Tony Soprano in
The Sopranos
 “It is always wise
to look ahead,
but difficult
to look further
than you can see.

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister
“
Change is not for its own sake, it’s
the means to the end, not the end.
Pearl Zhu
Author of Digital Agility: The Rocky Road
from Doing Agile to Being Agile
 “ Although self-organizing
is a good term,
it has, unfortunately,
become confused with
anarchy. 

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
The benefit of allowing a
team to self-organize isn’t
that the team finds some
optimal organization for
their work that a manager
may have missed. Rather, it
is that by allowing the team
to self-organize, they are
encouraged to fully own the
problem.

Mike Cohn
Agile trainer and author
“
Meetings should be
like salt–a spice
sprinkled carefully to
enhance a dish, not
poured recklessly
over every forkful. 

Jason Fried
Founder, Basecamp
“ There’s no sense in being precise
when you don’t even know
what you’re talking about.

John von Neumann

Physicist
“
Kill your product
if a pivot is not
beneficial and
persevering
no option.
It’s tough but Roman Pichler
the right thing to do. Agile trainer and author
“
Remember:
it’s not the documentation
that needs to be in sync,
but the people.

George Dinwiddie
Agile coach and trainer
“
The first thing to realize when
formulating your first DoD (Definition
of Done) is that it isn’t cast in stone.
You don’t need to spend an eternity
deliberating what it should be,
because it can evolve over time.

Ilan Goldstein
Scrum trainer and author
“
Any fool can write code that
a computer can understand.
Good programmers write code
that humans can understand.

Martin Fowler
Author and programmer
“
However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally
look at the results.

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister
“ Leadership is the art of
accomplishing goals
through other people.

Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising

Authors
“
You measure system
capability; you do not
prescribe it.

Mary Poppendieck
Lean trainer and author
“
Be prepared to cut your losses –
Canceling bad projects early
is success because you save time,
money and resources that can be
applied to better opportunities.

Ian Spence and Kurt Bittner

Agile authors
“
The best way to get
a project done faster
is to start sooner.

Jim Highsmith
Agile author
“
Optimism is an
occupational hazard
of programming:
feedback is
the treatment.

Kent Beck
XP trainer and author
“ Inside every large program,
there is a small program
trying to get out.

C.A.R. Hoare
Computer scientist
 “ People don’t adopt a methodology,
they adapt it.

Tom DeMarco
Author
 “
Be fixed on the vision,
but flexible on the journey.

Jeff Bezos
Founder of Amazon
“
“Scaling agile” always
sounds to me like “scaling
small-batch, hand-crafted
artisanal beer.” You end up
with Bud Light

Andy Hunt
Pragmatic programmer
“
Facts are better than
dreams.

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister
“ It’s better to be roughly
right than precisely wrong.

John Maynard Keynes

Economist
“
It is better to lead from
behind and to put
others in front,
especially when you
celebrate victory when
nice things occur. You
take the front line when
there is danger. Then
people will appreciate
Nelson Mandela
your leadership. South African President
“
Agile is a philosophy,
not a methodology.”

Paul Bennett
Software engineer
“
Carla A. Harris
Leader, author, and singer

When you are at a

crossroads about
trying something
or not, always
default to the try.
 “
In coaching, the idea
is to coach the person,
not the problem.

Lyssa Adkins
Agile coach and author
“
Frame our agility with fragility.
Embrace the humanity.

Lizzy Morris
Scrum trainer
“
My impact expands
beyond the four
walls I work within.

Angie Jones
Java champion, inventor
“
Everyone has a plan until they
get punched in the mouth.

Mike Tyson
Boxer
“If everything was
perfect, you would
never learn, and you
would never grow.

Beyoncé
Singer-songwriter
“
Resist the temptation
to jump to a solution.

Mary Poppendieck
Lean trainer and author
“
Budgets may count Full-Time
Equivalents (FTEs), but great
teams count on people.

Johanna Rothman
Agile trainer and author
“
Scrum Masters, please
don’t touch the task board.
It does not belong to you.

Michele Sliger
Agile trainer
“ People are what
make companies
agile, not approaches,
methodologies or
tools.

Pedro Gaspar Fernandes

Facilitator, neo-generalist
WHAT NEXT?
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