Category Archives: Better Agile

Why an Intermediate CSPO (Product Owner) course?

I am about to do an Intermediate Certified Scrum Product Owner course in Orlando.  Feb 21-22.  Followed by a Business Value Engineering workshop. Feb 23-24. In this post I want to talk about why the Intermediate CSPO is important and how it is different. First, our finding is that the Team is important. Any focus […]

Read More »

An Intro to BV Engineering: the paper

I have written version 2.2 of a paper that introduces the concepts around Business Value Engineering. See: http://agileconsortium.pbworks.com/w/page/28278924/Intro%20to%20Business%20Value%20Engineering I would appreciate your feedback, either here or in an email. Thanks!

Read More »

Committing for the Sprint

This is, to me, still a New Year.  A friend suggested I discuss New Years’ resolutions.  Or something like them, Sprint commitments. Henry Ford said: Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are usually right.  So, let us work backwards. To me, in most business situations, the main thing is satisfying the customer. […]

Read More »

Product Owner & the Team

Is the product owner a member of the team?  Yes, fully and completely. What is the biggest problem that most teams face? At the high level (value) or the low level (details), they don’t understand what the customer wants well enough. Who is mainly responsible for managing the flow of this ‘business information’ into the […]

Read More »

Public Impediment List !!! – 2

There is a good Scrum trainer who thinks that a public impediment list is not important.  So, if he can misunderstand, then we all can. Here is a better explanation of why it is important, I hope. I find the lack of a public impediment list is a prime indicator of a lack of focus […]

Read More »

Scrum & Kanban

Jim Coplein today posted a very interesting post on Jeff Sutherland’s Scrum Log.  It’s title is: An Alternative to Kanban: One-Piece Continuous Flow. In the piece, Jim discusses the definitions and merits of Scrum and Kanban. This is a subject about which I too have some passion.  While not as talkative as Jim, I will […]

Read More »

More about distributed Scrum – one example

Let’s talk about distributed Scrum using one example. There are so many situations and variations for distributed Scrum.  And, hence, many different suggestions, depending on the situation. One example Imagine you are the head of technology, in the US.  Imagine you have customers in the US, and your business people are in the US, and […]

Read More »

Better distributed Scrum

I was asked today for my main suggestions for getting better at distributed Scrum. Suggestion 1. Make a fair comparison between distributed and collocated in your specific situation. a. Cost per hour, usually lower for offshore people. b. Hours of “distributed” members, usually more. c. Hours for “local” members, usually more. d. Net effect on […]

Read More »

One reason for “Business Value Engineering” – 2nd pass

Let’s say some smart people have given you some great ideas about “business value engineering.” Let’s say those ideas include: More customer demos Having the implementers visit the customers as they “do work” or “live” (depending on your product) A better BV Model Don’t talk to customers (they don’t know they want an iPad) Taking […]

Read More »

One reason for “Business Value Engineering”

I said recently that business value engineering is the place we can improve the most. By this I mean: (a) identifying the small features that the customer will want the most (once they get them), and (b) identifying the MMFS (minimum marketable feature set). Perhaps we should also add: (c) identifying a “business model” that […]

Read More »