Blog: Agile & Business

Recommended Reading – June 2009

June 23, 2009

We have a list of recommended books, here. In addition, we can recommend the following: by John Kotter by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising by Taiichi Ohno by Frederick Brooks One of his famous quotes: “How does a project get one year late? One day at a time.” by Mugridge and Cunningham by Duvall, […]

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Breaking the world record

June 22, 2009

My younger daughter has her last swim meet of the season tonight. I am excited (and still a bit affected by Father’s Day yesterday). When I talk about Agile & Scrum & Lean, I often refer to the Michael Phelps’ attitude. Not his attitude in South Carolina, whatever you may think of that. (Not that […]

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What is Business Value Engineering?

June 11, 2009

I made a post about Business Value Engineering in AgileBusiness (Yahoo group) that I thought I would edit and then repeat here: QUOTE I have been asked to start a conversation about Business Value Engineering. So, here’s a start: What is it? It is a framework for continuously improving the delivery of Business Value to […]

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Poppendiecks: Designing a Lean Development Process

May 31, 2009

The Poppendiecks have a new advanced course (all welcome, but people already experienced in Lean-Agile will get more from it). Designing a Lean Development Process.Mnpls, June 9-10 Based on their new book (about to be released).More info: See here.  Subscribe in a reader

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AgileBusiness – new Yahoo group

May 17, 2009

Quick notice that we just started a Yahoo group called Agile Business. See here. Key words might include: Agile, Business, Business Value, Agile Project Management, Product Owner, business analyst, Lean, Product Management, Marketing, Executive, Manager, Agile for non-SW projects, etc, etc. Come and share your questions and your comments.  

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How do we know we have a good idea?

May 5, 2009

How do we know? I was reading the new book by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman recently. Recommended. It’s called “Scaling Lean and Agile Development.” In the beginning of the book, they give lots of ideas about “how to think.” At first, I found this curious, although the suggestions were very good. Only today did […]

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Yahoo Groups — 4 easy lessons

May 4, 2009

Apologies to those used to Yahoo groups. This is for beginners. First, why should you care? Because lots of really smart people use Yahoo groups (and ScrumDev in particular). Second, why should you worry? Because lots of people hear stupid things or get into flame wars on Yahoo groups (and similar). You must Think For […]

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Introverts and Individualists and Collocation

April 29, 2009

[Note: This blog post was published 4/29/2019.  The work-from-home ideas were not so strong then.  Read this and think.]   I am seeing a general trend. People are saying we should bend over backwards because implementers are introverts. (Yes, way over-simplifying a complex issue, but bear with me.) That position seems a bit too much, […]

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CSM Course, Durham, May 6-7. And May 8th

April 26, 2009

We are looking forward to a good Certified ScrumMaster course in Durham, N.C. We hope that people will get enough out of it to double their Velocity. (We know there is enough there to do that, but there are several other issues.) The course will address BV Engineering, Agile Estimating & Planning and other issues. […]

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Shock Therapy

April 12, 2009

Back in September, Jeff Sutherland spoke at the Googleplex in NYC. The talk includes a section on shock therapy. The video is called “Self-Organization: The secret sauce for improving your Scrum team.” It’s about 90 minutes long. Recommended. One key point: Shock therapy is a technique for a special and experienced coach to work with […]

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