What we talked about
- Small teams can’t afford a failed bet. Funding gets pulled, costs keep rising, and AI is changing what work looks like. A big company can absorb a project that goes nowhere. A nonprofit can’t. Short cycles let a team test, learn, and change course before a misstep becomes expensive.
- Listen first. The people who push back hardest on change are often the most burned out. We start by learning what their day looks like before asking them to try anything new.
- Show value early. In the first daily scrum we ran with a nonprofit team, everyone saw what everyone else was working on for the first time. After that, they wanted more.
- Sprint a marathon. Focus on the first mile, because you can’t predict mile 18. Work in short cycles, and plan around how much capacity your team actually has.
- Lead with clarity, not jargon. Teams don’t need the vocabulary. They need focus, clarity, and better habits.
- Doing more with less. Small teams are juggling finance, fundraising, and programs with no extra margin. A shared rhythm and clear priorities help them spend their limited time on the work that matters most, and stop losing hours to misalignment.