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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
One of my favourite scenes from Tombstone is when Ike Clanton says to Wyatt Earp, “Listen, Mr. Kansas Law Dog. Law don’t go around here. Savvy?” After Wyatt replies that he’s retired, Ike reiterates “Yeah, that’s good, Mr. Law Dog, ’cause law don’t go around here.”
A common theme that has been emerging from the classes [...]
Serge Beaumont posted a great article on the The Definition of READY at Xebia Blog. While the concept of being ‘ready’ for iteration planning is already in Scrum, I have found that it’s not something that gets a great deal of attention. Product Owners are left to “get stories ready” without having a clear definition [...]
There are some widely varying opinions on the validity of Scrum certification but I think, much like any education, it’s not the sole means of determining qualification for a position.
I attended a great session on Agile vs Traditional last night with the Toronto Agile group and while there weren’t many traditional folks there, the session helped validate much of what I believe is the most important aspects of ‘becoming agile’.
The panel included Mishkin Bertieg, Scott Ambler, Colin Doyle, Orhan Kalayci and Winifred Menezes and [...]
Today we are experimenting with 1 day sprints as an attempt to clear a large backlog of product work and client related work. During our last retrospective we noticed that there was at least one interruption each day during the sprint and while they were small, it’s still proving the point that when your [...]
It’s been quite a while since I last blogged, my apologies to my faithful 10-person readership. Today was a particular hellish day after being off for only a few days. I came back to complete dis-array within the team and process and actually was quite surprised based on how well things were going and how [...]