Category Archives: Better Agile

Impediments – Charlotte

These are the impediments the Charlotte group identified today. Some of these need a ‘lack of.’ Culture, company politics Missed requirements Team motivation Competing priorities Lack of mgmt support Insufficient expertise Not enough senior support Budget constraints Lack of funding Undefined requirements Poor planning Missed stakeholders Poor training Resources not allowed to focus Requirement clarity […]

Read More »

Impediment List: Toronto

We just completed a CSM course in Toronto. Here are the impediments they identified, although some are phrased in a positive way. Eg, for some you need to add “…, lack of.” This list, as with others here, supports the idea of a public impediment list.  The real issue is ‘fixing impediments regularly and aggressively.”  […]

Read More »

What is a Real Team?

I recommend you read “The Discipline of Teams” by Katzenbach and Smith. See HBR.com.  This is an article; they also wrote a book with the same title. Their original book was The Wisdom of Teams.  All recommended. In the article, they give a short definition of a real team. And they distinguish carefully between a […]

Read More »

“It’s not too far, it just seems like it is.” (Yogi Berra)

I wanted to talk quickly about 4 classic mistakes or issues.  We all must deal with these. Before starting, I wanted to mention this famous and important quote: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.” (Yogi Berra)  I forgot to mention this one in the last class, and […]

Read More »

Impediment List – Inhouse Course May 15

I am a strong supporter of identifying small things that we can take action on, one at a time, to get better.  In Scrum, we call this an impediment list.  This week, the class identified these impediments. I think I have ‘translated’ them correctly …. Lack of governance 0% transparency Actively disengaged team members Competing […]

Read More »

Velocity: What if a story is partially completed in one sprint?

Question: If you had a user story (Story X) with four Story Points at the start of the Sprint, which was not completed by the end of the Sprint but the majority of the work was done (e.g., just two small bugs remained), would you recalculate the Story Points when adding this into the next Sprint […]

Read More »

Is It Really important to estimate initial velocity?

Question: “Is it really important to have a SP estimate before the first Sprint starts?” I think he means an estimate of the initial team Velocity before the first Sprint Planning Meeting. Answer: The short answer to his immediate question: Yes, it is important. Why? It makes it a tighter meeting (SPM, Part 1), and […]

Read More »

What to tell the Executives – Part 2

Last week I discussed this issue with the Agile-Carolinas group.  Wonderful conversation.  Many great comments. One thing I was struck by was that there are many many different types of situations.  And that we need to address, possibly, many different things, depending on the situation (including the people). In the session, I focused on the […]

Read More »

Agile Velocity | Estimating Initial Agile Velocity

Agile Velocity by Lean Agile Training Here is a method for estimating initial Agile Velocity that may work for you. I expect you to use it in the context of Agile Release Planning. (Anything useful should be credited to Jeff Sutherland; any issues should be credited to me.) First we take some assumptions or identify […]

Read More »

Charlotte Apr 2014: Public impediments

The following impediments were identified by the Charlotte CSM class this week.  Again, we may have dups, although that probably is an indicator of relatively higher occurence. Business – IT not aligned Poor test practices Set date before project begins Over documentation Poor communication Unclear roles Lack of resources Disengaged customer Uncontrolled team member egos […]

Read More »