Archives

The Organzation of our Scrum course – 1

Why is our Scrum course organized the way that it is?     First, is a Scrum Team organized? Well, a good Scrum is usually described more as adaptive than organized. Of course, we can debate the meaning of these words, during a day or during a sprint, or during a release. I would rather […]

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3 Ways a Scrum Team is Managed

We think it is reasonable to manage a Scrum Team in at most 3 ways.  (OK, we mention also a fourth.) (Context: To simplify, we assume a smallish firm with teams that are mostly working independently.  There are lots of other contexts.) There are two main rules. A. Do NOT over-manage or over-control the Team.  […]

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Kanban – Love it. Why?

I have been working on Kanban lately. I love the Lean ideas.  There is so much we still need to do and understand better.  Interestingly, the ideas are counter-intuitive to most people yet, obviously simple and powerful when you take some time to do them. The one sentence version (hugely over-simplified): For most people, I […]

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Southern Fried Agile – Proposed topics

Some of you may find interest in the topics I proposed for Southern Fried Agile.  I may or may not ‘get’ any of these…. Culture, Change, Scrum: What we can do about it This is an evolving topic for me.  I spoke on this same basic topic last time, and people seemed to be pretty […]

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Courses and Workshops we offer

Here is a list of all the lean – agile – scrum courses and workshops we offer.  We do these both publicly and in-house. Course and Workshop Offerings Ver10 This is not a complete list, but gives a good overview. We will update this listing from time to time. Of course we are happy to […]

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The Truth: Scrum is Not Easy!

May I tell the truth? I am a trainer, and people come to my courses.  And often they want an easy answer.  A magic answer that is not disturbing, or bothersome, but is in every way good, easy, friendly and just better. In other words, they come to change, but they don’t want to change.  […]

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Impediments – Charlotte Course July 2014

In the Charlotte course, the following impediments were identified.  These came from different people and were expressed in different ways.  I copied what they said.  So, for example, sometimes a “…, lack of” is implied. No one knows what done looks like Missed stakeholders Poor or non-existent planning One release per year (mentality) Technology Undefined […]

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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.”  […]

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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 […]

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Metrics and Managers

Dan Greening gave an excellent talk about some aspects of metrics at the Scrum Gathering in New Orleans in early May 2014.  Go here to download his presentation: http://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/events/global-gatherings/2014/new-orleans-2014/presentations  (You must at least be a member of ScrumAlliance to have access to that page…sorry.) Dan inspired me to discuss metrics. First point: Managers like metrics. This […]

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