Blog: Agile & Business

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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Organizing a small-ish company to do Scrum and ‘regular work’

April 3, 2014

Holly asks: “I am relatively new to this methodology, and I would like to learn more about how resources are assigned to Scrum teams.  Resource allocation – do Sprint team members need to spend 100% of their time in a Scrum Team?  If so, how do we account for existing job responsibilities?” *** Good question […]

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Learning from the Toronto Scaling Workshop

April 3, 2014

Last week we had a Scaling with Agile Workshop in Toronto. More and more I am convinced this scaling workshop is necessary for many people to apply Scrum well, in their business model.  They need to work through how to make it work in their context.  And many of the issues in ‘making it work’ have […]

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Halifax: Public Impediment List

April 3, 2014

As some of you know, I am a strong proponent of aggressively attacking the impediments.  It starts, I think, with a good public impediment list. So, as examples, here are the impediments identified by the class in Halifax. Team is working on too many things No prioritized backlog Uninvolved PO Keeping everyone in the loop […]

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Peter Drucker on Knowledge Worker Productivity

April 2, 2014

In the Winter of 1999, Peter Drucker published an article on “Knowledge Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge.” Here is access to the article. “The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers.” He was looking for a 50 times increase […]

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Culture & Agile & Change at the NYC Scrum Users Group

March 30, 2014

On March 20th, 2014, we had a great discussion.  The group was great, very active participation. Thanks especially to Rob and Mary, and also to many old and new friends. Here is the slide share. Mainly we discussed Fearless Change. This is the work of Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising. They are soon to […]

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What to tell the Executives?

March 30, 2014

To be successful with Agile, sooner or later we want to engage the Executives.  Or, sometimes, they are already engaged, but we feel we need to talk to them.  To have them understand more or do something differently. So, first, be patient and be hopeful.  Too many of us (agile advocates) start the conversation feeling […]

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Public Impediments – Toronto March 2014

March 28, 2014

Here are the issues this group thought were important.  Many are ‘issues’ in a waterfall model.  The list is not in order of priority, nor necessarily impediments in an Agile model.  Some are vague to us (stated in too few words), but I think they knew what they really meant.  Maybe one or two is […]

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Public Impediments – Charlotte March 2014

March 14, 2014

We are a strong advocate of a public impediment list.  Why?  There are many reasons, but my top 3 are: Team members know when to tell and when not to tell the ScrumMaster about a new impediment Assuming some attempt at prioritization has been made, the Team knows when to give the SM feedback about […]

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Definition of Ready

March 12, 2014

Gabriel asked: Hi Joe, Can you recommend few good sources for “Definition of Ready” ? Answer:  I like Jeff Sutherland’s ideas.  In general, but also in this area. Did you see this? http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2009/07/ready-dynamic-model-of-scrum.html It includes an article.  Read that. As he taught me, the DOR (or ‘ready, ready criteria’) is flexible team by team.  Each […]

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