Blog: Agile & Business

Is Velocity Evil? (No.)

January 20, 2023

In a webinar today, someone said that Velocity is evil if equated with productivity.  I disagree.  And partly agree.   First some explanations (short, maybe too short for some): The Velocity of a sprint is the number of story points that the team “earned” (completed) that sprint. It’s the way we score in the game […]

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What is Scrum? – by Ken Schwaber

December 20, 2022

Here is a short paper by Ken Schwaber: whatIsScrum Willem-Jan Ageling (here) says that the paper is from 2003.  So, about 10 years after Scrum was invented. Schwaber and Sutherland (and others) had written many papers by then.  And the Scrum Guide (of 2009) had not yet been written. It is interesting to see the […]

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Fixing Agile Transformations – 1

September 26, 2022

Wow, what a big topic! Jon Jorgensen put up a post on LinkedIn.  Here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6978462442318135297/ (Jon has lots of good posts. Recommended.) I have not asked Jon exactly what he meant by his question.  I suspect a bit of mid-western sarcasm is involved. Here is my reaction, which is meant to be of some partial […]

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BVPS, SPs, Fun and Pareto – A few ideas toward better agile

August 12, 2022

Better Let’s agree on a few things: The most important thing (that we will discuss) is a better life.  For each of us, for the Team, for our customers, for the organization, and more broadly.  And, we think better agile will help that. There is no doubt in my mind that we, virtually every team, […]

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Commonalities and Differences

June 16, 2022

What is unavoidable — in Teams we work with people. And we work also with people outside the Team.  But let’s discuss that topic in another post. The next obvious thing to say is that people are complicated, each person by herself or himself, and in a Team of seven then, we get a lot […]

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Agile Carolinas: Requirements with Agile – How to become better

May 6, 2022

Agile Carolinas meeting: May 17, 2022 – at 5:30 pm.  IN-PERSON. We may try to also broadcast via Zoom.  ie, Hybrid.  (We need someone to help with that.) [Links to be added]   *** Unclear requirements are always a problem.  Always hard in a way. So, let’s discuss how we are doing “requirements” in an […]

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More, Better…

April 27, 2022

Goethe wrote at the very end of Faust: Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis Das Unzulängliche, hier wird‘s Ereignis Das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist‘s getan Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan (For those drawn to this quote, see: https://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2015/01/das-ewig-weiblich-zieht-uns-hinan-or.html) One line in English:  “The unachievable here comes to pass.” It’s a very famous passage in German literature, […]

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An Agile Approach to Requirements

April 26, 2022

Below is the first draft on this topic.  With a big need to be shorter.  I eventually wrote something shorter. *** An Agile Approach We propose that we discuss this for an hour. INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS When we start working on a product, there are many unknowns, often including: What is the real problem? What is […]

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Agile Requirements Process

April 26, 2022

The following is a proposal I made to one client.  Might be useful for you. REQUIREMENTS DISCUSSION We propose a 1-hour discussion of the following practical suggestions. NEEDS (I am guessing; these are common.) we need an agile, adaptive solution part of the adaptation is to the specific people and situation of each Team we […]

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Postponing the Sprint Start?

March 29, 2022

Question: Can a PO postpone the start of a Sprint?  Does the PO have the power to do that? *** Answers: First, why would the PO want to do that? It is important to keep the Team and others (esp the Business Stakeholders) on a regular, consistent rhythm.  Do not let them get used to […]

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