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Category Archives: Teams
How does QA fit in?
Question from Liz: The team and I are starting agile and we can’t get much info on where QA fits into Agile. Answer: First, I want to reiterate Jeff Sutherland’s concern (mentioned in this blog post), that the biggest problem is too many teams are not getting to working product (working software) within a Sprint […]
No man is an island, entire of itself
In summers past, I have gone whale-fishing from Nantucket island. Well, not I, although I did go to beautiful Nantucket, as did Ishmael, but they never called me Ishmael. I have set out from Nantucket, as they did in former days, intent to catch a whale. Albeit mine was a metaphorical whale. So, you see […]
A real person in a good team
Some people take the view that a person (often themselves) will be lost in a team, and, to be fair, this can happen. There are bosses and there are teammates who want you to conform, to submit, to lose your identity to a meaningful degree, but in a real and good team, the opposite occurs. […]
The importance of teams
As I teach Scrum and Lean-Agile classes, I often meet people who don’t understand teams. Often this is true for some of the smartest and most capable people. Why? I think there are many answers. One is that they have been taught the single-leader team discipline. (This is the phrase that Katzenbach and Smith use […]
What is Scrum?
I am excited to be giving a Certified ScrumMaster course with Jeff Sutherland next week in Richmond, Virginia. So, I was thinking: What is the essence of Scrum if you would play the game well? (Remember that Scrum is named for the Scrum formation in Rugby. We often show a video of the famous All […]
Breaking the world record
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 […]
Small teams
I was just looking at “The Discipline of Teams” by Katzenbach and Smith. These are the same gentlemen who wrote “The Wisdom of Teams.” First, my strong bias (which I find is reinforced in many places, including this book) is that all “real work” these days takes place in teams. (Yes, I need to add […]
What’s a team?
Let’s review what is a team in Agile or Scrum. A small group — seven plus or minus two — motivated by the vision of one person that will realize good Business Value; dedicated (usually 100%… certainly a lot), with almost all the skills needed to realize the vision; that works together daily. A team […]
The Concept of “Ba”
“Ba can be thought of as a shared space for emerging relationships.” This is a quote from Nonaka’s paper called (surprise): “The concept of ‘Ba.’” Why is this important? Takeuchi and Nonaka work at a famous business school in Japan. They have been working on New Product Development to understand how and why some firms […]
Agile is not like golf
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 […]