Category Archives: Better Agile

Scrum 201 Course – Why?

Why the ‘Scrum 201’ course? Problem: This course addresses two problems. (A) how to get more success from Scrum (B) how to advance your career We are finding far too many teams are only getting 20% or so improvement with Scrum. This is by far too low. One way to address this problem is more […]

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Jeff Sutherland Google Talk (2014) on “Scrum” (book)

Here is a fairly recent Google Talk by Jeff Sutherland. (Late 2014.)  The talk gives some key ideas from his recent book, “Scrum.” The talk is long, about an hour, but you can stop it any time.

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Lean Agile Open – April 15, 2016.

[Ed. Note: This was written 4/16/2016.  We have had many Open Space events since 2016.] We had a great event in Charlotte yesterday, and I hope you did not miss it. Self-organizing people did the best they could (which is actually a lot) to learn as much as they could with other smart people about Lean […]

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The A3 Approach to Kaizen

In every class, I teach the A3 approach to Kaizen. Kaizen is usually translated into English as ‘continuous improvement.’ In Scrum that means ‘removing impediments.’ The first thing to note is that it is an approach.  It is a method, with certain values and principles, and the fundamentals of the approach are more important than […]

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Scrum 201 Course: Agile-Scrum to the next level

I have a Scrum 201 course coming up in Atlanta. This is important, needed and useful. Why? Why Scrum 201? Lots of people have tried Scrum and everyone gets some reasonable benefit. But, you may not have gotten nearly the benefits possible.  So, the purpose of this course is to enable you to get much […]

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A list summarizing Scrum

We have a slightly improved version of our ‘List Summarizing Scrum.’ Not many changes, but a few minor ones. A list summarizing ScrumV6. How can this be useful? First, it is only a list, and prints onto one page (front and back). Two proposed uses: 1. Visit a team, and discuss the list fairly quickly. […]

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Q: Becoming a good ScrumMaster

Q: “What is your advice on becoming a good ScrumMaster?” A: This is a good and difficult question. The difficulty is where to start and how best to express it. First, what is a good ScrumMaster? What makes one better than usual? You may think it odd, but the first thing I want to say […]

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Question: Explaining Impediments to the Sprint Goal that Happen

I received this email with a question: Hi Joe, I wanted to follow up and let you know how much I enjoyed the Agile class and how much I’ve enjoyed implementing it at my office. The team has really seen the improvement with their own eyes, and they are getting more and more brought in […]

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Multitasking

I think the key goal of Scrum is to help the team maximize the Business Value from the team to the customers. Another subsidiary goal is to enable the team to focus. Focus is more or less the opposite of multitasking. Perhaps even more to the point, multitasking is one of the great destroyers of […]

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Wide-Band Delphi Estimation for Business Value – 2

Revised: 9/26/2023. See the first post on this topic: Part 1.  At the bottom is a link to the third post. Step by step Let’s walk through how to do it. We have a Product Backlog, usually user stories. Identify the right people to be the Business Value experts. We recommend they have participated in […]

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