When projects fall behind and time to market appears to slow down, what does your organization say the cause is? Does it result in the need for more resources? Does more process get introduced? In lean thinking, continuous improvement is one of the main points of focus. Understanding the concepts of waste in an organization … Read more Continuous Improvement, Reducing Waste
Is change something that is under strict command and control at your organization? In Scrum, the concept of impediments ideally becomes a catalyst for change from the bottom up. I have seen organizations make change something that becomes very restrictive. In an Agile organization, being able to move quickly is critical to continuous improvement and … Read more Impediments Backlog Over Change Management
Do you find that you are committing to deadlines knowing that they are unrealistic? Does your development team have a relationship with the customer? Is your customer directly involved in your process? The Agile Manifesto says. “customer collaboration over contract negotiation” I interpret this as involving your customer directly in your product development life-cycle. It … Read more Customer Collaboration
What is a feature team? Throughout my experience, I have heard many different definitions/descriptions of what makes a feature team. For example, a feature team is: Developers and a tester (QA) UX, developers, and QA Architect, QA, developers A component team It wasn’t until attending a class by Craig Larman a couple years ago on … Read more What is a Feature Team?
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