Do you find that your requirements change during development? The second principle of Agile states, “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.” This principle also emphasizes the importance of changing for the good of your customer. In Scrum, the backlog/requirements are based on maximizing value of the … Read more Changing Requirements
Are your business people involved directly in your development process? Do they give feedback directly to the development team? One of the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project” In other words, developers should ideally have a direct channel of communication to their business … Read more Developer and Business People Engagement
Have you ever heard the title Scrum Master and wondered what does it mean? What do they do? How do they add value? The Scrum Guide defines the role as, “The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone understand Scrum … Read more Scrum Master, Servant Leader
Do you find that it takes months to years to deliver your organization’s products and features? Does your organization try to get all the product scope complete before shipping value to the customer? In the Agile Principles, one of the principles is “Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.” This means what … Read more The Art of Simplicity
When was the last time you took a moment to invest in building a relationship with someone at your organization? Throughout my career, I have always found it invaluable to invest in people both in and outside my organization. Dale Carnegie, writes about investing in people in his best selling book, How to Win Friends … Read more Invest in People
I have seen a lot of conversations around estimating work. Do you use hours? Do you use days? Do you use story points? In the Scrum Framework, there isn’t a prescribed method on how to do this. However, the following is written in the Scrum Guide, “The Development Team is responsible for all estimates. The … Read more Estimating Work
Who is accountable for maximizing customer value with the development team at your organization? Do you think of multiple people? Do you have trouble answering the question? If this is not clearly defined at your organization, it can cause a lot of confusion and a product’s quality may suffer. The Scrum Framework clearly defines the … Read more Maximize Customer Value with a Product Owner
What is your organization’s highest priority? In the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto, this ‘highest priority’ is defined with the first principle: “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Satisfying the customer is the highest priority. In software development, that means delivering valuable software early … Read more Focus on the Highest Priority
In the Scrum Framework, there are built in ceremonies to help the organization and team be agile and learn quickly. These include: daily scrum sprint planning sprint retrospective sprint review Each sprint has a goal and at the end of the sprint cycle, the team reflects on goal completion and what can be done to … Read more Learn Quickly
Are teams and people working in silos in your organization? Is communication difficult across different departments? Cross functional teams (also called feature teams in software development) are a great way to work together more efficiently. In the Scrum Framework, the development team is cross functional. This is defined as, “Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed … Read more Break the Silos with Cross Functional Teams