Blog: Agile & Business

Three Google/Agile videos

April 21, 2007

Google is doing Agile, and four people have come to talk at the Googleplex about Agile. (Maybe more.) One is Ken Schwaber, who talked to them for about an hour, mostly about Scrum. The excellent video of his talk is here. The nuances of Scrum become clearer when you hear Ken explain it. His website […]

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Carnival of the Agilists for Apr 20

April 20, 2007

Mark Levison, a friendly Canadian (I am working with a bunch of those Canadians lately) has the controls for the Carnival of the Agilists this time. Again, we are honored to have been selected, this time for Adopting Agile and similar posts related to Lean. Check it out. And check out the Agile Tangents group […]

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Adopting Agile (Lean Software Development – 4)

April 19, 2007

Brad Appleton, whom I mentioned in my last short post, also had this post linking to Agile Adoption as reported in the Agile Journal. This issue is talking about top-down Agile Adoption. My own view is generally that the workers deliver to the customers, and the managers support the workers. So, in line with that, […]

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Lean Resources

April 19, 2007

Brad Appleton had this post with a LOT of Lean resources. I have not reviewed them all. I will endeavor to annotate them later.

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Little’s Law – Lean Software Development – 3

April 16, 2007

Again, another post that was inspired by the Poppendieck’s.  This one is a particular favorite of mine: Little’s Law. (No, not me.) This is from John Little, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School, and it’s about queuing theory. We believe (and in fact experience has shown) that we should satisfy the customer as quickly as […]

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Do we have to use the F-word?

April 13, 2007

OK, it’s a provocative title. I like to talk about two F-words: Feelings and Failure. This post is about failure and how to use it. I was working inside a firm recently and someone said: “We can’t talk about failure around here. That would hurt our careers.” Ummm. First, let me (apparently) change subjects completely. […]

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The Elements of Agile Style – 2

April 12, 2007

Apparently my recent post about this new draft handbook was buried in the March posts. If you are interested in this handbook, please see that post.  Subscribe in a reader

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Lean Software Development – 1

April 11, 2007

This post was partly inspired by Mary & Tom Poppendieck, who are experts in Lean Software Development. It was also inspired by an inquiry. So, I wanted to talk some about Lean. Specifically, about waste, which is known as muda in Japanese. Earlier I posted about waste. This is a different perspective on the same […]

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Agile is not like golf

April 10, 2007

We have to be careful with similes (or metaphors). If you have played golf, you know that any fool can hit the golf ball a few yards with any of the clubs. It is getting that tiny ball in that tinier cup that’s the problem. It is scoring near par that is hard, and mastery […]

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Agile is like golf

April 8, 2007

I went to New York last week to visit friends and to visit one of the greatest cities in the world. Wonderful energy. A fairly well-known joke line goes like this: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Answer: Practice, practice, practice. This is one of my main points as I watch The Masters golf […]

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