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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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A personal note

In 2001 I was living in N.C. working as a consultant in NYC. I remember early on a Tuesday morning getting on a plane in Greensboro and flying to LaGuardia. I stopped to get some beanie babies for my kids, and took a taxi to the World Trade Center at about 8:25 a.m. It was […]

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Hyperproductive Distributed Scrum

Back on July 21, 2008, Jeff Sutherland gave a talk on Hyperproductive Distributed Scrum at the Googleplex in NYC. Here is the video.

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Self-Organization in Scrum

On Sept. 4, 2008, Jeff Sutherland gave a talk on self organization in Scrum at Google in NYC. The talk also covered some of the associated contradictions (or perhaps, seeming contradictions). Here are the slides from the talk.  Google video is here.  

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Toward a general theory of business value

I presented yesterday at Agile 2008. Here is the link to the slide deck. I said more than is on the slide deck. Still, here it is. Two key ideas today. Business Value is about learning, as a team. BV is always changing (on many dimensions) and we learn, in part, to keep up with […]

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The Nokia Test (5): A prioritized Product Backlog is essential

We started a series on The Nokia Test some time ago. This is the fifth explanatory post about the test. To find the others, search above (left), and here is the original post. The second item in the second section of The Nokia Test is this: There is a Product Backlog prioritized by Business Value […]

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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 […]

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Kaikaku or kaizen? (2)

I recently did a mail/internet survey, asking people what kind of training would be of  interest? (If you would like to respond to this, please tell me.) Someone responded, “How about adopting a continuous improvement approach?” Now, I don’t know what the writer had in mind exactly (although maybe I will learn more). I assumed […]

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