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Eric Willeke

Shows kids lined up for a tae kwon do class
Lead with Heart

Five simple words towards effective transformational leadership

While chatting with a client over the weekend, I realized how much my time training and teaching martial arts continues to influence the way I engage with the world. We were specifically amused with the idea of a classroom full of aspiring agile coaches participating in a call/response, and it Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 3 months3 months ago
Lead with Heart

Start with why… I want to, but how?

As coaches and change agents, we are so often told to ‘start with why’. As someone who’s used Sinek’s golden circle thinking tool for a very long time, I’m a huge proponent of this. However, while there is often unified consensus around the effectiveness of this approach, I have found Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 3 months3 months ago
Deliver with Confidence

Five ways to commit: Exploring sprint planning models

This year’s SPCT day and SAFe Summit had me thinking about some of the variations of I’ve used for team-level activities over the last seventeen (!) years. One of the big things that has served me well is having a variety of different techniques for sprint planning that I use Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 4 months4 months ago
Herd of elephants, including babies
Uncategorized

Acts of appreciation: Preserving greatness

I recently drove along the rim road of the Grand Canyon as part of a road trip. Being there, surrounded by nature, aware of the effort to maintain it, and reflecting on life and journeys, led me to reflect on the importance of appreciation and preserving what is great. Today Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 5 months5 months ago
Elephants butting heads - Photo by Aenic from Pexels
Steer with Clarity

Understanding and changing your constraints

As I’m teaching today, I was reminded of a way I used to describe system constraints back when I taught a lot of kanban classes and helped design kanban systems. This quick post captures them for reference and to seed a discussion. Join the conversation on LinkedIn! What do I Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 6 months6 months ago
Steer with Clarity

Three patterns for Portfolio Epics: Why, how and when they work well

I spend a lot of time working with executive leadership who are trying to start, or restart their lean portfolio management approaches. A big part of this conversation tends to be “how do we use epics? How SHOULD we use epics?” and I find myself describing a set of usage Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 7 months7 months ago
Image overlaying work patterns on the SAFe Solution Investment Horizons guard rail
Steer with Clarity

Applying solution horizons: creating focus to clear up confusion

I recently posted an article describing the evolution of a single platform across the various investment horizons. After posting that, I found myself in conversations with a client around how this view maps to the work that’s being done inside the portfolio, and I realized there was an assumption that Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 7 months7 months ago
Steer with Clarity

The now, the new, and the never: metrics for stability and successful change

Articulation of success criteria is pervasive in every agile approach, at every level of value creation. In many ways, the core behavior of agility is defining what success looks like for a activity, acting to make that true, and validating that it remains true and continues meeting the customer needs. Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 8 months7 months ago
Steer with Clarity

Applying solution horizons: story of a new business platform

I see confusion in how the various solution horizons apply in SAFe’s “Guiding investments by horizon” guard rail, so I thought I’d tell a story of how I see it play out in practice using a large scale enterprise platform as the backdrop. This framing is consistent with the original Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 8 months7 months ago
Steer with Clarity

Will your consultants make you agile?

“I won’t push any of you, see? I didn’t give you anything, and you don’t owe me anything. Your power is yours; it has always been there. I’m just going to help you reach it. What you do with it, from there on, is up to you” – Shill(from The Read more…

By Eric Willeke, 8 months8 months ago

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