As a Scrum Master, it’s never easy to know what a job is really going to be like before you start, but we’ve been looking out for what we think are bad smells in job offers. Please feel free to tell us your own in the comments. Job title of… Read More »Scrum Master job descriptions
We all know that “Individuals and interactions” are important. I believe that getting explicit agreement on how the team will work together is fundamental to a happy and performing team. One exercise I have run in various orgs, from fashion retailers to hospitals, is a simple mapping of roles but is… Read More »Role mapping
I often get asked “What makes a great product owner?” My answer used to be that the PO needs to have both: knowledge (e.g. a good understanding of the vision / needs) and authority (i.e. being able to agree the team’s direction without it being overturned by someone else). The… Read More »What makes a great Product Owner?
As coaches, we sometimes end up ploughing a lone furrow in our attempts to help individuals, teams and organisations to develop and improve. Speaking from experience, this isolation can be a little unnerving and often frustrating. The thoughts that have previously entered my mind include: Am I using the right… Read More »Supervision
For its first session of 2016, the London Agile Discussion Group ran a pub quiz around agile and lean. The teams did pretty well and it was a close fought battle. The quiz caused a lot of interest so, due to popular demand, we’ve published a slightly cut-down version. No looking… Read More »Agile pub quiz
Last weekend I was chatting with my Dad about his current work project, and our conversation led me to start thinking about pair programming and pairing in general. The idea of pair programming was popularised from the early days of eXtreme Programming or XP. The book Extreme Programming Explained written… Read More »Is pairing just for developers?
Story, Epic or even Saga, what is the difference? David Lowe’s post from last year gives a good description of each. However, in my opinion, there is not much difference. A story, epic or saga all narrate the type of user, the need of the user, and the value returned… Read More »Don’t forget to add in the conversation
My last post: Testing is an activity, not a role, prompted a few comments on Twitter from my friends in the testing community. Most people didn’t think the post went far enough in explaining that although testing may indeed be an activity, it’s probably more than one activity, and that different activities… Read More »Software Development is a Team Sport
In traditional software development environments, testing may have been something that was outsourced. One group of people wrote the code and handed it off to a different team for testing. More recently, as the Principles of Agile were created and the Scrum framework in particular was popularised, cross functional teams… Read More »Testing is an activity, not a role
In my last post, Coaching v Mentoring, I talked about how, in my opinion, a Coach is someone who helps people “identify and achieve their goals” and that a coach should do this through questioning rather than “the coach influencing or giving their own opinion on the subject”. Surely, this… Read More »G.R.O.W as a Coach
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