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Intermediate Certified Product Owner course Charlotte Dec 7-9

We have a intermediate Certified Scrum Product Owner course. In Charlotte, Dec 7-9. Leader: Joe Little. Because he has an MBA, discusses BV Engineering, and has worked with Jeff Sutherland and the Poppendiecks and other great coaches, we think this course is very valuable. Potential Product Owners, business side people, business stakeholders, ScrumMasters, and managers […]

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Scrum is a major management discovery

Steve Denning wrote an article titled “Scrum is a major management discovery.” A useful statement.  I recommend you read the article. It is clear and unfulfilled.  That is, we have by no means fulfilled all the promise implied by that statement.  Have many people forgotten that promise?  Or it is something we never think about?  […]

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Freedom

For reasons unknown, I ran into a picture I took of a statue of Jefferson in Paris (it is along the Seine, near the Musee d’Orsay). Then I saw something else which led me to this quote from Jefferson,  about the meaning of July 4th.  I think it has a broader meaning, so I quote […]

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Creativity

A friend was reading Daniel Pink’s book Drive. And so I started reading it. I had this series of thoughts. First, I have for a long time thought that the key thing about our jobs is creativity.  Takeuchi and Nonaka call it knowledge creation, but to me it remains essentially the same thing.  And it […]

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Defining Business Value // #2 Customer Smile

Imagine that you make a new camera, and after all that work — does it make the customer smile? Imagine that it is not Scarlett Johansson. Just a girl or young woman. Or maybe any customer who buys your new camera. You don’t make any profit on that camera, just she smiles. How do we […]

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Nokia Test: Know your velocity (7)

Another installment in explaining the Nokia Test aka The ScrumButt Test. Background: There are far too many teams doing “Scrum, but…[eg, we don’t have a ScrumMaster]”.  This is not “full-out” Scrum, and almost always means that the team is not getting impressive results. My original blog post is here.  And I have other blog posts […]

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Getting higher velocity! Take 2

I posted yesterday these listed below would lead, or at least could lead, to higher velocity (higher productivity) in your new product development teams: * Better retrospective meetings * Better impediment lists * Better business cases to management * More effective action (get approval and implement one ‘fix’ until you get results) * Better use […]

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Getting higher velocity!

Higher velocity per se is not the end-all and be-all.  But it sure does help. Having trouble getting to hyper-productivity? Try these things.  Together. * Better retrospective meetings * Better impediment lists * Better business cases to management * More effective action (get approval and implement one ‘fix’ until you get results) * Better use […]

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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 […]

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Release Planning: Business Value Points

One difference between what I recommend for Release Planning and what others recommend is Business Value Points (BVPs). What do I mean? First, is it useful to distinguish the Business Value (BV) of items in the Product Backlog?  Yes, of course. Why?  Many ways to explain.  One: Pareto says you can re-apply the Pareto rule […]

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