Blog: Agile & Business

Scrum Roles – Product Owner

March 19, 2017

Note: This is one in a continuing series of posts re Scrum Intro.  The preceding post is here. The Scrum Guide does not ‘require’ you to have a fully dedicated team.  I think if you read it carefully, you will see that they are urging you to have a fully dedicated team.  Certainly I strongly […]

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Connecting Agile Planning to Agile Action – 1

March 9, 2017

“Only connect!” A quote from EM Forster.  And also our theme here. We think that one of the most useful things to connect is Agile Planning to Agile Action. If we connect these and ‘manage’ them well, we think that will lead to greater success.  Notably greater success. *** Let’s explain briefly. First, I just […]

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PMI Palmetto Symposium

March 6, 2017

Below are three documents and a link.  All as gifts for you.  Since you came to the PMI Palmetto Symposium. The presentation (PDF): Plan-Win The Lean Agile Open flyer: LAO FLYER 2017 A discount coupon for a Certified ScrumMaster (or CSPO) course for PMI Palmetto members.  CSM Cour Flyer Greenville A link to download my […]

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Why Scrum?

February 27, 2017

Note: This is the second in a continuing series of posts re Scrum Intro. The preceding post is here. Why Scrum?  How did it get here?  How do we understand it?  How do you explain it to your colleagues? Why was Scrum invented? The way I understand it, Jeff Sutherland became a software development group manager […]

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Scrum Guide 2016

February 24, 2017

Here is the new Scrum Guide as of July 2016. Scrum-Guide-US-2016 Worth re-reading. There is a newer Scrum Guide, published 2017, which is available here: https://leanagiletraining.com/scrum/scrum-guide-2017/

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Question: Is Scrum all or none?

February 10, 2017

Kevin asked: (I paraphrase and greatly simplify his question, perhaps beyond his recognition)  ….. Do you have to do Scrum ‘all or none’? ANSWER: We get this question a lot, phrased in different ways.  Here is one answer. I consider it an Agile principle that people are free.  The idea started long before the Declaration […]

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Agile Release Planning – some questions

February 5, 2017

QUESTIONS: Hi Joe, I’ve read through your book [on Agile Release Planning] and want to say that it was a great review of our Friday session, I enjoyed your clear and concise language, and am sure this will make an excellent resource. But there are still a few things that are unclear to me; it […]

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Five Characteristics of Successful Teams

September 17, 2016

OpenView Partners is a venture capital firm. They have some wonderful stuff on their blog, and Jeff Sutherland often posts there. Here is another great post based on research at MIT about successful teams. Five Characteristics of Every Successful Team & How to Build Cohesion Let me list the five characteristics. Everyone on the team […]

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9/11

September 11, 2016

I speak to you today as a New Yorker — I lived there 20+ years. On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 I flew to New York LGA. I stopped to get Beanie Babies for my children, and then took a taxi that lovely September morning toward the World Trade Center. I needed to […]

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Scale down!

September 5, 2016

In some situations you feel forced to scale. We recommend: Scale down. George Harrison has a nice song called “Cheer Down!” which is a play on the idea of “cheer up!” Similarly, in my opinion, too many people want to scale up and create more and more layers and add complexity to scaling. This is […]

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