A Home That Rebuilt a Life” — the story of Army veteran Sean Karpf
After stepping on an IED in Afghanistan, Army Sergeant Sean Karpf faced years of surgeries, rehab, and the long, slow work of rebuilding a life altered by injury. What changed everything was not a single miracle but a community-backed act of care: Homes For Our Troops (HFOT) built and donated a specially adapted, mortgage-free home designed around Sean’s needs — roll-in shower, widened doorways, lowered counters, a 360° outdoor walkway and dozens of other adaptations. The day Sean turned the key and walked into that home with his family, he described it as more than a house: “Homes For Our Troops helped me rebuild my environment. Together, they’ve given me the foundation to move forward, not just as a veteran, but as a husband, father, and business owner.” WWP News & Media
HFOT’s mission is exactly this: build and donate specially adapted, mortgage-free homes to severely injured post-9/11 veterans so they can regain independence and focus on recovery and family. Since 2004 HFOT has delivered hundreds of homes and continues to partner with organizations (like Wounded Warrior Project) and local communities to make these long-term, tangible commitments to veterans and their families. For recipients like Sean, the gratitude is palpable — not just for shelter, but for restored dignity, daily independence, and the practical ability to be present for their loved ones.
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5 Essential Skills Every Scrum Master Needs
Being a Scrum Master isn’t just about booking meetings and quoting the Scrum Guide. It’s about showing up every day as a change agent — the one who helps people work better together, face complexity with courage, and actually deliver value.
It’s easy to forget that Scrum is fundamentally about people.
Your job as a Scrum Master is to unlock that potential — not by managing them, but by enabling them.
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10 Mistakes Enterprises Make When Scaling Agile — and How to Avoid Them
When I walk into a Fortune 500 boardroom and hear, “We’ve adopted Agile,” I brace myself. Usually, what follows is a whirlwind of rebranded status meetings, overwhelmed middle managers, and teams confused about whether they’re sprinting or slowly marching in circles.
Enterprise Agile transformations are rarely short on ambition. But too often, the reality is a mismatched combination of frameworks, tool obsession, and unclear intent. Over the past decade, I’ve led Agile rollouts in healthcare, finance, and tech. These are the ten recurring mistakes I see — paired with practical remedies rooted in experience.
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If You Want Better Stories, Stop Writing Them All Yourself
I’ve talked to a lot of product owners who are drowning in tickets, trying to “get ahead” by writing every single user story themselves.
I used to be one of them. And every sprint, we’d slip. Morale tanked. The team blamed the process, and I blamed myself.
But after one conversation — and one uncomfortable realization — I found a single thread running through every success story I’ve seen since.
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Velocity = The Most Abused Agile Metric Ever
Welcome to the dark side of velocity — the number that started as a planning aid and ended up as a weaponized performance metric, often wielded by people who’ve never touched a user story in their lives.
In this episode, we’ll break down:
Let’s sprint into it. (Pun 100% intended.)
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A Make-A-Wish That Turned Into a Gift for Others
When Karina’s Make-A-Wish moment arrived, she didn’t ask for a trip or a celebrity meet-and-greet. Instead she asked to create a day for other sick kids — a place where they could forget hospitals and treatments for a while. Make-A-Wish marked Karina’s request as their historic 500,000th wish and worked with partners to turn it into a virtual “camp” experience so many children could participate and feel seen. Karina’s wish became a gift that multiplied: she received her wish, and countless other kids received joy, connection, and a break from illness — a powerful example of gratitude that gives back.
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The Heart of New Leadership is Curiosity
Most of us are drawn to rules and limits. They give us a sense of safety. Structure and predictability offer comfort: we know what to expect, and what’s expected of us. For a while, this feels like stability. But in truth, it often leads to stagnation.
The artist doesn’t value safety and smallness. The artist values discovery. To create something new, you have to step beyond the known.
The same is true for leaders.
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Is your team moving in sync—or spinning in circles? - Mike Cohn
Ever feel like your agile team should be working smoothly—but something’s just a bit off? Handoffs feel clunky. Meetings drag. Even small changes spark big debates.
It’s not that your team isn’t skilled—it’s that you’re not quite in sync.
Rowers have a word for the alignment you’re seeking: swing.
What is swing?
In crew rowing, swing is that near-magical moment when every rower moves in perfect unison—each stroke in sync, each effort amplified. And I do mean perfect unison. This means each rower:
Swing is rare. When I rowed, our boat might have gone an entire race without once truly achieving swing. (And yes, it was usually my fault. Thanks for asking.)
But when it happens, it’s effortless. The boat flies.
Agile teams can experience the same kind of swing.
When everything starts to flow
When teams are aligned and in sync you’ll know it:
None of this happens by accident
Achieving all of this isn’t easy.
Like rowers chasing swing, agile teams have to practice, reflect, and adjust—over and over again—in their quest to go from good to great.
But take it from me, when it clicks, it’s magic.
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Today we remember Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry - Happy Veterans Day
On May 26, 2008, in Paktya Province, Afghanistan, Army Ranger Leroy A. Petry and his team were ambushed. During the firefight an enemy grenade landed near Petry and several fellow Rangers. Without hesitation Petry grabbed the grenade and attempted to throw it away from the group. The grenade detonated as he was throwing it; Petry survived but lost his right hand. His quick action saved the lives of the soldiers beside him. For that act of conspicuous gallantry he was awarded the Medal of Honor — presented by President Obama in 2011.
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How To Align Your Team Before Year-End - 5 Things You Must Do NOW!
1. Call Out the Elephant in the Room
2. Don’t Let the Momentum Stall
3. Run an Assets & Liabilities Exercise
4. Revisit Your Purpose Statement
5. Consider a Design Sprint
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The Hand Written Letter of Gratitude
In a classroom study, students were asked to write a heartfelt letter of thanks to someone who had helped them and then read that letter aloud to the person in a surprise face-to-face meeting. The scene that followed — the surprised, emotional reactions from the recipients and the visible pride and relief on the students’ faces — was unforgettable. Beyond the moment, the students reported lasting increases in well-being and social connection, and many of the recipients later described feeling genuinely seen and appreciated. It’s a small, simple act (writing and delivering a gratitude letter) that created a powerful ripple for both giver and receiver.
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How Do we GROW? - Getting People on The Same Page!
Do you know the Acronym GROW?
G = Goals
R = Reality
O = Options, Opportunities, and Obstacles
W = What We Will Commit to do First...
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Are You Protecting Your Team Against the Right Thing? - Mike Cohn
A lot has been written and said about the responsibility of a Scrum Master to protect the team.
Examples of protecting the team typically involve running interference with well-meaning but overzealous product owners, stakeholders, and managers. Teams run into trouble all the time from people who want it all now or who keep adding more work in the middle or a sprint. Scrum Masters keep all that noise away so that the team can focus on delivery.
But if you are only focused on problems coming from squeaky wheels, you’re missing one of the biggest dangers out there: complacency.
Agile is about continually getting better. I don’t care how good a team is today; if they aren’t better a year from now, they’re not agile.
Complacency can creep in when a team sees some initial improvement from adopting an agile approach. Team members will notice how improved they are and think that’s enough.
But there’s almost always room for further improvement.
Some teams become complacent about their process and stop looking for ways to deliver more value each iteration. Still other teams become complacent in seeking out new engineering practices that could make the team even better.
Protect your team from complacency by setting high expectations and encouraging the team to set even higher expectations of their own performance.
Teams that refuse to settle for the status quo are teams that advance from good to great.
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No, Product Management Isn’t Useless — You’re Just Doing It Wrong
If you think PMs just write tickets and slow things down, you haven’t seen product management done right.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard some version of this:
“Do we even need product managers anymore?”
Usually, it comes after a failed launch, a bloated backlog, or a roadmap that reads like a Frankenstein wishlist stitched together by six departments and zero users.
And sure — if that’s what you think product management is, I can’t blame you for questioning it.
The Scrum Master Role Is Disappearing - Or Is It?
The layoffs of 2023 told a story that few in the tech industry wanted to acknowledge. Among the 120,000+ tech workers who lost their jobs, Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches were disproportionately represented. But this wasn’t just about economic belt-tightening it was the culmination of a quiet revolution that’s been brewing for years.
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Trick-or-treaters Leave Their Halloween Candy For Child Battling Leukemia
A search for hope at the end of this very anxious week led me to this humble bundle. Zoe, 3, is the proud product of TJ and Courtney Thomas of Atlanta, Georgia.
Back in February, Zoe was diagnosed with leukemia. And because her immune system is now compromised, she couldn't go trick-or-treating on Halloween with all the other kids. In fact, her parents even had to put up a sign to keep other kids away. The sign read: "Sorry, no candy. Child with cancer. See you next year!"
"The whole purpose was just so that we wouldn't have to keep telling kids 'sorry' and have disappointed kids," Zoe's mother Courtney Thomas said. "Never expected anything like this."
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Witch’s Brew of Metrics — Don’t Let Vanity Hex Your Team
Metric definition template
Name:
What it measures:
Owner:
Frequency:
Thresholds / signals:
Action when threshold met:
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Poltergeist Meetings — When Meetings Throw Things At You...
5 micro-rituals (practical)
Purpose line on invite — one sentence: “Decision needed / Sync / Info.”
Time-boxed agenda — 3 bullets with owner & minutes.
No Rotating facilitator — prevent single-person theater.
Two-minute rule — speakers over two minutes get a “parking lot” nudge.
Outcome artifact — one sentence note added to the meeting invite that records decisions.
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The Phantom Sprint — Invisible Work That Steals Velocity
Your sprint looks healthy — until a phantom dependency eats your finish line. Here’s how to find the invisible work before the demo.
Detection & prevention tactics
Dependency board: visible KANBAN lane for external asks with owners and ETA.
Capacity buffer: protect 10–20% of sprint for unplanned but likely work.
Pre-planning checkpoint: 5-min readout with ops/support to surface recurring interrupts.
Risk register: short public list of items that can block sprint goals.
The Haunted Backlog — When Old Stories Won’t Die
Triage: Mark backlog items > 90 days old as “graveyard candidates.”
Reframe: Turn vague epics into a one-sentence outcome + metric. If you can’t, bury it.
Timebox an experiment: If still valuable, create a 1-week spike with a clear success metric.
Assign ownership: No owner = forever ghost. Give it to someone accountable for outcome vs. activity.
Retire ritual: Monthly “retire or revive” cadence — items not revived are archived with a short rationale.
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