I had an interesting conversation with a manager the other day about how to gain more insight into changes that are ongoing in the application one of our pilot Scrum teams is working on. First, what’s the problem? Group A was doing independent regression for a release and uncovered some ”defects’ that were a result [...]
One of the simulations I like to facilitate during training sessions is a simple penny flipping exercise learned from Mishkin Berteig to show how the team approach can lead to substantial improvement and productivity gains.
The idea is simple, have the attendees work in a serial process where they have to pass the penny from person [...]
This is a quick and simple exercise I ended up doing ‘off the cuff’ but based on feedback from the class, had huge value that talked about why the conversation is the most important piece of the user story.
I focus heavily on making the point that the written word is less important and while INVEST [...]
Agile Coach Camp 2010 is coming the weekend of March 19, 2010 in North Carolina. I’ve heard great things about Coach Camp and this is my first opportunity to attend. You can check out their site here and for those who aren’t familiar with Coach Camp, it’s an Open Space conference focused on peer-to-peer learning and [...]
Ah, good old re-work. The thorn in the side of Scrum teams, the impossible mountain to climb for development teams. Re-work is un-avoidable. When people see working software, they get new ideas and might want some changes. Here are some thoughts for handling re-work based on a few scenarios that popped up at work [...]
The Agile Manifesto is the heart of soul of what it means to be Agile and I often refer back to when talking to colleagues and especially with those that are new to Agile. This post was sparked after a great cross-group meeting that happened yesterday where some information was shared between groups that typically wouldn’t have [...]
I often find that people new to Agile have a tough time understanding that Agile processes are empirical and there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all model that will work for every organization. Scrum, XP, Crystal, Lean and other Agile methods all have their practices that provide guidance and tools but none of them are going to [...]
What I really enjoy about being part of the Agile community is open communication and willingness my colleagues have to learning and self-improvement.
I’ve been fortunate enough to interact with some wonderfully brilliant people and a keen observation I’ve taken away is how these folks give feedback to fellow colleagues. The flip side is that when it comes to [...]
Recently I had a brief messenger chat with a former co-worker that they determined they were actually using Scrum-ban instead of Kanban. The timing of this chat coincided when I seemed to be coming across a multitude of discussions about what is/is not in Scrum, what is/is not Kanban and so on.
My initial response was [...]
Recently I had a brief messenger chat with a former co-worker that they determined they were actually using Scrum-ban instead of Kanban. The timing of this chat coincided when I seemed to be coming across a multitude of discussions about what is/is not in Scrum, what is/is not Kanban and so on.
My initial response was [...]