Archives

Purpose of the Daily Scrum

What is the purpose of the Daily Scrum? First, how often do we have one? Obvious — daily! Well, apparently not so obvious to all. Some people think we need one twice a week. Let’s go back to the purpose. The purpose is to enable the team to make micro-adjustments in any dimension to land […]

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Public Impediment List!

This is essential in Scrum. That is my opinion, and while an impediment list is not called out in the Scrum Guide, I think Jeff Sutherland would at least insist that the continuous removal of impediments is essential. Read his blog posts and form your own opinion. Why public? Well, so everyone can see and […]

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Technical Debt

Here is a wonderful video by Ward Cunningham about Technical Debt. (Thanks to my friend James Collins for finding it on his iPad.) You may want to ‘Wikipedia’ Ward Cunningham, if you don’t know him well. There is some irony here, since Cunningham invented the wiki concept (a.k.a. wikiwikiweb) and implemented it first, and his […]

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Jeff Sutherland video: Basics of Scrum

Nice video. Five minutes. Highly recommended. Complex adaptive systems — an important idea. [The videos were moved around. This seems the best link.] Other great videos on this same page now.

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Little’s Second Law

One day I was writing down quotes to be printed in a HUGE font and put in the team room. On that day, I thought it would help (and actually, I think for that team, it did help). Anyway, this sentence came to me: People are remarkably good at doing what they want to do. […]

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Tell Her No

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a song called “Tell Her No” by the Zombies. I like to play it sometimes in the courses. Here is the song: A simple and stylish song with quite a message. I like to let the music tell the message. I think it reaches […]

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Intermediate CSPO and Workshop

Thanks to Maria Diaconu and Dave Muldoon, and with the help of Catherine Louis and others, we have significantly revised our Certified Scrum Product Owner course. This has been in progress in a way for years. I have long thought that the CSPO course should be treated as a post-CSM course, a step beyond ‘beginner.’ […]

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Lame Scrum Implementations

I was talking to a colleague about one problem, and then said, “but this is not our biggest problem — our biggest problem is lame scrum implementations.” So, I thought I would discuss that. First, truly, our biggest problem is not Scrum or anything to do with Scrum. Our biggest problem is to figure out […]

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The Four Key Things

In my courses, I strive for four key things. I want you to believe “I can do it.” I want you to have some clue about the direction and what you want to do. I want you to be scared. Yes, scared. At least some. “If you wait for perfection, you might wait too long.” […]

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“Leader’s Guide to Radical Management”

I just got a copy of “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management” by Stephen Denning. I recommend it. It is not so hard to learn Scrum and apply it to one team, but I always hear that, in any large-ish organization, “We need to change the culture.” OK then, one way is to read and […]

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