Using Scrum & Kanban in the real world
I often get asked how researchers and designers are meant to synchronise with the development team. Split-team agile (aka mini-waterfall) “Is it okay to have research and design running one sprint ahead of the build team?” Their suggestion is that we split the team in two: sub-team A (usually researchers and/or designers) and sub-team… Read More »
A couple of months ago, I talked about trying to innovate on society’s real-life problems. My idea was to create an environment where we could harness the power of great minds (who are not currently connected to the problem) to bring fresh ideas and explore new options. Last month, we ran our first ‘innovation day’. What… Read More »
How does your organisation measure success? Most people would probably answer that question by stating some sort of financial performance metric: revenue, margin, sales, EBITDA. Of course they would. After all, we are in business to make money. So what happens when our efforts are entirely focussed on those metrics, when a business manages itself… Read More »
“Brush your hair.” “Eat your breakfast.” “Have you brushed your teeth?” “Bag packed?” “Shoes on. Put your shoes on. Come on, put your shoes on. We need to go!” That’s a typical morning when I’m getting the kids ready for school. It’s stressful (more to me than them). It appears that this is mirrored around the country.… Read More »
After reading a paper on fairness recently, I started wondering how many of the problems we face are caused by a perceived lack of fairness. Queue jumpers. Drivers that don’t abide by the same rules as you. One parent who gets up more than the other to care for an unsettled infant. Your colleague who… Read More »
“If we put a bunch of amazing people in a room together, they could think up innovative solutions to some of society’s real-life problems. We know a load of amazing people and we know people who are trying to improve society.” This was the sudden realisation I had back in April. So we’ve done something about… Read More »
With our addictive apps, sticky widgets, and blindly engaging interactions, we’ve created an era of distraction and fear. How familiar is the following scenario? You’re focusing on writing an email when your watch vibrates to alert you to a new email. Buzz. You give it a quick glance, decide to deal with it later and… Read More »
“So a Scrum team has three roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development team. Where does the project manager fit in?” This is a common question when someone first encounters Scrum. They are naturally concerned that there will suddenly be no project management, and try to work out whether the project manager becomes a Product… Read More »
What is this? “It’s a Kanban board” is the most common answer. It’s not. It might be an “Agile Board” or a “Scrum Board”, but it’s not a Kanban board. Here’s why. Although 看板 (Kanban) has multiple meanings in Japanese, what we (and the people who claim boards like the one above are Kanban boards) mean… Read More »
Where are Agile and Scrum on the adoption curve? What about Kanban? XP? SAFe? Waterfall? This is what we recently asked attendees at the London Agile Discussion Group. What is the adoption curve? The Diffusion of Innovations, or adoption curve, seeks to explain how, why and at what rate new ideas and innovations spread. The… Read More »