Monthly Archives: April 2012

Release Planning: Business Value

[For those who have not been reading before, this is a continuation of a series that starts here.] Now we move on to Business Value in Release Planning. As Yogi Berra said: “You have to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” If you are in […]

The Team and Introverts

I have several friends who are introverts.  And, as I get older, I recognize my own introvert side. And I appreciate it more, and accept it more. (The MBTI says I am an extrovert.)  It is to one introvert friend that I dedicate this post, a friend who has given me so many insights into […]

Agile Principles and Values

In the post linked below, Jeff Sutherland wrote, apropos the Agile Manifesto, a bunch of things about some key Agile values and principles.  Excellent stuff. As some of you know, I think it is essential for people doing agile or scrum to know and be in sync with the values and principles. What I call […]

Release Planning: Product Backlog

[This post is one in a series on Release Planning, which starts here.] After we complete the Vision, we must develop the Product Backlog. There are two parts to this. First, we must define the Roles to use in the User Stories. Second, we must write User Stories.  I call this second part a User […]

Referral Program

We have introduced a referral program. The idea is simple. We want to provide a token of thanks to those who refer a person to one of our classes. The token is a $25 Amazon gift card (we can substitute other gift cards of the same amount). So, it is not a huge referral bonus, […]

Public Impediment List – Again

I wrote the following post to a Scrum group. Perhaps you will find it interesting. It is lightly edited. And it is in response to another person’s post. *** Let’s talk about the impediment list more. Along the way I will mention some of the problems I see in real life. I find that most […]

What cocktail parties teach us

The title above is the title of an article today in the Wall Street Journal.  The subhead is: “Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks Are Easier to Combine” It’s all about how we humans are built to focus. Multitasking is, well, inhuman.  A few monkeys can pretend to multitask, but […]

Refresher Attendees: new program

We have just started a new program:  having prior attendees of my courses attend the same course again.  Almost for free.  Well, not exactly free.  You have to pay a much-reduced fee. People need this. they have forgotten they have mis-remembered they have not used certain skills or knowledge they have seen and grown accustomed […]

Release Planning: Vision

[This is one in a series on Release Planning.  The series starts here.] This is the first of several posts on my suggestions for the details of doing better agile Release Planning. The first step is Vision.  We define the vision, and make sure that all the right people see the same vision and “agree […]

Minimum Definition of ‘Agile’: Scrum-Butt Test

First, let’s assume that we believe that our firm needs a good agile transformation to achieve important business goals. Perhaps these goals are: (a) faster time to market, (b) more creativity in the product, and (c) greater productivity.  (In any case, not ‘Agile’ for agile’s sake.) One method to achieve more success from the agile […]