Blog: Agile & Business

Agile – Penny Game Rules

February 12, 2013

As attendees of my courses know, I like to use the Penny Game.  So, I wanted to share more. Rules: 1. Say: “We are about to see who is the best penny processor in all of [city] today.  And the winner, with the best single round, will win $20.” 2. Select 4 players (these will […]

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New CSP Process

January 30, 2013

The Scrum Alliance has announced a new CSP Process.  That is a new process for becoming a Certified Scrum Professional.  Start here. [Note: The pages have been changed since this post.] This is mostly good. We recommend it. Some discussion: First, the main changes are: (a) 36 months of experience (not as well defined by […]

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Making Change Happen

January 28, 2013

I was delighted the other day to have a brief conversation with Mary Lynn Manns, who is the co-author of Fearless Change, an excellent book on making change happen. I told her I had this idea: We can let change happen to us. (I was thinking mostly of being passive in the face of bad […]

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We want a Stable Team

January 27, 2013

I think our work generally is about knowledge creation.  And specifically, your business is about knowledge creation. (Knowledge creation is key for almost all people who attend my courses and workshops.) It is about innovation, creativity, and inventiveness. It is about cool solutions to hard business-technology problems.  It is about some sort of intersection between […]

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Don’t Blame Scrum for Helping You See

January 25, 2013

Today I completed a CSM course & Workshop in Charlotte. I forgot to tell the attendees one thing. One of the major purposes of Scrum is to enable the Team to see its problems better.  Seeing problems (impediments) better, the Team and firm will take more action to fix the top impediment (well, over time, […]

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The spirit of Scrum

December 30, 2012

In the US, where I am, we speak of the spirit of Christmas. While some people are a bit cynical about it, I think I actually see it sometimes.  It is meaningful and people do know what you are talking about. In a roughly similar way, the spirit of Scrum is also real. Some people […]

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Please try all of Scrum.

December 29, 2012

Scrum is a bare framework. It is very simple.  Scrum is not trying to be a full methodology. Lots of people are doing Scrum-Butt.  “We do Scrum, but…” Then they say… …we don’t have a product owner. …we change the length of the sprint often …we don’t have a ScrumMaster …we don’t do a _daily_ […]

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Joe’s Agile Release Planning – New Version

December 28, 2012

While I was writing the book on Agile Release Planning I was posting free versions. The book is now available here: https://leanpub.com/joesagilereleaseplanning   But it is no longer free (except to class participants).  (Although I frequently have deals on LinkedIn or Twitter.) I hope you will leave comments or send me comments or questions.

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Summarizing Scrum (a list)

December 27, 2012

The more I think about Scrum, the more it becomes a Gestalt…a whole thing.  It becomes somewhat misleading to talk about its parts. Scrum itself is actually very small.  We recommend you do all of Scrum; it will lead to better results almost always.  It you only take part of the medicine…well, you will not […]

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Is release planning worth it?

November 28, 2012

In a word: Yes, if done professionally. Next, let’s acknowledge that it is a fair question.  At some point, if release planning costs too much versus the benefits, then it is a waste.  But we do not find that the ratio is nearly that bad. How is release planning, and release plan refactoring… useful? A […]

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