Blog: Agile & Business

Webinar: 2 Patterns for Managers

April 16, 2021

This is another in our Webinar Series.  1 hour. One: Impediment Removal Team The basics of the idea are simple. You form a Scrum Team with Managers.  The job of the team is to fix impediments for a group of Teams (say, 5 to 20 teams).  In the Product Backlog of the IRT is a […]

Read More »

Webinar: Managers and Team self-managing

March 1, 2021

This is another in our $5 Webinar Series.  1 hour. The new Scrum Guide says that Teams should be self-managing. And Jeff Sutherland says managers are essential in Scrum. Broadly we know that there are some “poorly trained” managers, at least from an agile viewpoint.  And others find there are good managers out there (at […]

Read More »

Scrum Guides 2020 – 2009

February 19, 2021

Here are the Scrum Guides I know of: 2020-Scrum-Guide-US Scrum-Guide-US-2017 Scrum-Guide-US-2016 Scrum Guide July 2013 Scrum Guide Oct 2011 Scrum_Guide_v1_Scrum_Alliance_Feb2010 The ScrumGuides.org site implies that they started with this Feb2010 version.  But I found two earlier versions. Scrum Guide Nov 2009 The Nov 2009 version appears to be the only Scrum Guide issued only by […]

Read More »

Webinar: Renewing Your Certification

February 4, 2021

I just did a half-hour webinar on this topic. Lots of good questions. Two main methods: Gather X (often 20) SEUs (Scrum Educational Units) (eg, to renew your CSM) Take or re-take a Scrum Alliance certification course (eg, re-take the CSM course) I will give this webinar again in a few weeks.  You are welcome […]

Read More »

Renewing Your Certification

February 4, 2021

Updated: August 31, 2023. Cut-to-the-chase: Your key takeaway may be: Re-Take the CSM or CSPO with Joe because simpler and “cheaper”. Explained in section 3 below. *** Should you renew your Scrum Alliance certification?  Yes! I think it helps, it increases your knowledge, it should enable you to do Agile better with your Team, and […]

Read More »

Agile Release Planning – Questions

January 31, 2021

QUESTIONS Joe – during an agile release planning session how long do you estimate it will take for Business Sponsors to point approx 50 stories? Actually, I’m estimating we will need 32 stories for 6 months. Yes, I’m looking to hold an ARP at the end of Feb for 1 feature. Thanks, Craig REPLY First, […]

Read More »

BV Points – 1

January 31, 2021

QUESTION Hi Joe – reading your ARP book, and you talk about BV and highest number is 100. But, what is the harm in using regular 1,2,5,8,13 Fibonacci numbers for business value? I do get when you find R that it will be lower. R = Bv (5) / SP (5) would mean an R […]

Read More »

What is the problem set?

January 31, 2021

You have probably heard the recommendation: solve the right problem. Often in new product development, we think of this as the customers’ problem. And then we have ideas, from Lean and elsewhere, such as: root cause analysis – the idea that the customer presents with a symptom(s), but the root cause is not so obvious […]

Read More »

The illusion of control

January 31, 2021

Daniel Mezick has a good post in LinkedIn today: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielmezick_the-command-and-control-military-gets-agile-activity-6761443011659370496-itMo About the illusion of control, and the idea that control is an emergent property.  (There’s that darn word emergent again.)  See the article he links to: “The ‘Command and Control’ Military Gets Agile.” https://www.infoq.com/news/2010/06/c2-military-gets-agile/ *** Some quick thoughts. Of course it is an illusion that […]

Read More »

New “Refresher” course policy

January 29, 2021

We are introducing a new policy. For a very low fee, you can take ANY course again. Rules: It must be a course or workshop you have taken before (eg, per Scrum Alliance).  And that we give Any instructor.  You could have taken the original course with any instructor. You must have completed the original […]

Read More »