Blog: Agile & Business

2014 State of Agile Survey

March 8, 2016

Here are the survey results from Version One on the state of Agile. A pretty good job, I think. Many interesting observations in the survey. Let me highlight one. Under “Barriers to Further Agile Adoption,” the top three answers were: 44% ability to change organizational culture 35% not enough personnel with the necessary Agile experience […]

Read More »

Release Planning: Summary of our blog posts

March 7, 2016

Here are the main ones, in order. Joe’s Approach to Agile Release Planning Release Planning: Vision Release Planning: Product Backlog Release Planning: Business Value Release Planning: Effort (1) Release Planning: Effort (2) Release Planning: Risks, Dependencies, Learning, MMFS and Other Release Planning: Completing the Plan Refactoring the Release Plan Some additional related posts: Agile Release […]

Read More »

A list summarizing Scrum

March 5, 2016

We have a slightly improved version of our ‘List Summarizing Scrum.’ Not many changes, but a few minor ones. A list summarizing ScrumV6. How can this be useful? First, it is only a list, and prints onto one page (front and back). Two proposed uses: 1. Visit a team, and discuss the list fairly quickly. […]

Read More »

Q: Becoming a good ScrumMaster

February 25, 2016

Q: “What is your advice on becoming a good ScrumMaster?” A: This is a good and difficult question. The difficulty is where to start and how best to express it. First, what is a good ScrumMaster? What makes one better than usual? You may think it odd, but the first thing I want to say […]

Read More »

Scrum makes work a Game.

February 21, 2016

You know, of course, that Scrum is named for the Scrum formation in rugby. Generally, Takeuchi and Nonaka were inspired by the ‘rugby’ they saw in several great companies and how they created new product innovation. Sutherland and Schwaber read that article in HBR titled “The New New Product Development Game.” That was a key […]

Read More »

Wide-Band Delphi Estimation for Business Value – 3

February 16, 2016

This is the third in a series of three.  See Part 1 and Part 2. ____________________________ How can we use the BV points? We could organize the Product Backlog strictly by BVPs, at least initially. In fact, I recommended this, to see patterns or to make any mistakes obvious.  Put the story cards in rows […]

Read More »

What is Scrum?

February 13, 2016

Note: This is the first in a continuing series of posts re Scrum Intro. I am starting a series of posts to explain quickly what Scrum is. It turns out that Scrum is very simple, and yet difficult to explain concisely. The main purpose of this series is to give my course attendees a bit […]

Read More »

“It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world”

February 11, 2016

I suppose we can all agree, after reading any newspaper, that the outside world is… mixed up, muddled up and shook up. Do we let ourselves see that this is also true of the world and the people immediately around us?  And maybe — ah! — even ourselves? Agile and Scrum are ways to work […]

Read More »

Question: Explaining Impediments to the Sprint Goal that Happen

February 5, 2016

I received this email with a question: Hi Joe, I wanted to follow up and let you know how much I enjoyed the Agile class and how much I’ve enjoyed implementing it at my office. The team has really seen the improvement with their own eyes, and they are getting more and more brought in […]

Read More »

Multitasking

February 1, 2016

I think the key goal of Scrum is to help the team maximize the Business Value from the team to the customers. Another subsidiary goal is to enable the team to focus. Focus is more or less the opposite of multitasking. Perhaps even more to the point, multitasking is one of the great destroyers of […]

Read More »