Blog: Agile & Business

The Scaling Dilemma

May 25, 2014

Some very useful comments about scaling by Mary Poppendieck. http://www.leanessays.com/2014/02/the-scaling-dilemma.html

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Blinding Flash of the Obvious

May 25, 2014

Tom Peters wrote a blog post, with an executive summary of his key points. He mentions that virtually all of them are “the blinding flash of the obvious.” That is — insights that are obvious (once you think of them), but that we don’t usually think of them. Here: http://tompeters.com/2014/04/excellence-excuses/ Suffice to say, I think […]

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“It’s not too far, it just seems like it is.” (Yogi Berra)

May 16, 2014

I wanted to talk quickly about 4 classic mistakes or issues.  We all must deal with these. Before starting, I wanted to mention this famous and important quote: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.” (Yogi Berra)  I forgot to mention this one in the last class, and […]

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Impediment List – Inhouse Course May 15

May 15, 2014

I am a strong supporter of identifying small things that we can take action on, one at a time, to get better.  In Scrum, we call this an impediment list.  This week, the class identified these impediments. I think I have ‘translated’ them correctly …. Lack of governance 0% transparency Actively disengaged team members Competing […]

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Velocity: What if a story is partially completed in one sprint?

May 6, 2014

Question: If you had a user story (Story X) with four Story Points at the start of the Sprint, which was not completed by the end of the Sprint but the majority of the work was done (e.g., just two small bugs remained), would you recalculate the Story Points when adding this into the next Sprint […]

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Is It Really important to estimate initial velocity?

April 28, 2014

Question: “Is it really important to have a SP estimate before the first Sprint starts?” I think he means an estimate of the initial team Velocity before the first Sprint Planning Meeting. Answer: The short answer to his immediate question: Yes, it is important. Why? It makes it a tighter meeting (SPM, Part 1), and […]

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What to tell the Executives – Part 2

April 27, 2014

Last week I discussed this issue with the Agile-Carolinas group.  Wonderful conversation.  Many great comments. One thing I was struck by was that there are many many different types of situations.  And that we need to address, possibly, many different things, depending on the situation (including the people). In the session, I focused on the […]

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Agile Velocity | Estimating Initial Agile Velocity

April 27, 2014

Agile Velocity by Lean Agile Training Here is a method for estimating initial Agile Velocity that may work for you. I expect you to use it in the context of Agile Release Planning. (Anything useful should be credited to Jeff Sutherland; any issues should be credited to me.) First we take some assumptions or identify […]

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Charlotte Apr 2014: Public impediments

April 24, 2014

The following impediments were identified by the Charlotte CSM class this week.  Again, we may have dups, although that probably is an indicator of relatively higher occurence. Business – IT not aligned Poor test practices Set date before project begins Over documentation Poor communication Unclear roles Lack of resources Disengaged customer Uncontrolled team member egos […]

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Question: Advice to a beginning ScrumMaster

April 12, 2014

Question: “I am a beginning ScrumMaster in a tough situation. I have some ideas, but I am unsure what to do, and unsure what to do first. What can you suggest?” Answer: I think this is common. In reality, there is no end to the things a ScrumMaster can do to help the team. So, […]

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