Archives

Productivity Now

The economy is in a bit of a tailspin now. We can help ourselves. If you wait for the Wizards of Washington to help, you might wait for the wrong team. How do we get ourselves out of this jam? We need a simple way, a simple feedback loop, for telling if we are productive, […]

Read More »

Business Value Engineering

Business Value Engineering? What is that? Well, we mean all the practices and work-methods around assuring that more and more Business Value is being delivered to the customer, and the firm satisfies all its constraints (e.g., good return to shareholders). This is based on a key Lean idea. We are trying to optimize the end-to-end flow of […]

Read More »

What to do first?

I just got an email from someone who recently went to one of our Scrum courses. (Note: This is a long but, I think, interesting post. Bear with it if you can.) QUESTION: Hi, Let’s say one is going to work as a team lead for a software project in an organization that currently does […]

Read More »

The Nokia Test (6): Estimates created by the team

Another installment on the Nokia Test. Before we begin, a quick mention that Jeff Sutherland has done an improved scoring on the Nokia Test. See here. So, the next item on the test says: “The Product Backlog has estimates created by the team.” Why is this important and what does it mean? Meaning first: So, […]

Read More »

Agile Portfolio Management — 2

OK, so we got started earlier. This continues an earlier post. What next? Ummm. One of the goals of Agile Portfolio Management is making sure the most important things are done first. And that all of us are only working on the highest priority things. And Agile Portfolio Management should try to achieve that goal […]

Read More »

Agile Portfolio Management – 1

A few people have been asking about “Agile Portfolio Management,” or at least, “How do we manage this stuff?” What they mean is what I call Agile Portfolio Management. Agile Portfolio Management is of course distinct from Scrum, but for simplicity, I have assumed a Scrum context. First, Scrum is relatively silent on this subject, […]

Read More »

Reading List CSM Sutherland/Little course

We recently led a course in Atlanta, Georgia. Suggested reading included the following: Note: I believe the Amazon images do not show up well if you use an ad blocker or https. ______________________ “The New New Product Development Game” by Takeuchi and Nonaka “The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s Success” by Takeuchi “The Concept of ‘Ba’” […]

Read More »

Scrum Certification Test

The Scrum Alliance has recently announced a Scrum Certification Test (a.k.a. CSM Test). Two cheers. This is a minor good thing. It is an opportunity to say what makes someone good at Scrum. Hint: High scores on the Scrum Test probably have very little to do with it. First, Scrum is a team sport, so […]

Read More »

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 […]

Read More »

All business is personal

We are in the political season, sometimes called the silly season. I will avoid discussions of politics, but I mentioned politics to introduce a well-worn phrase: “All politics are local.” Whether that is true or not, it led me to the observation that “all business is personal.” That phrase and a note on this blog […]

Read More »