Using Scrum & Kanban in the real world
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 »
As per my previous post on SAFe, if you have multiple teams working on individual products with minimal dependencies, then I don’t think you should worry about scaling; multiple independent Scrum teams can work harmoniously alongside each other just fine. However, some organisations believe they need multiple teams working on the same thing. They then… Read More »
Take a look at your product backlog. What does it look like? Is it a prioritised list of features that your client or PO have asked for? Most are. If you’re lucky it might be a list of features that are based on needs which you’ve gleaned from real users. But is this how you… Read More »
Nudge is a book that investigates the philosophical questions around influencing people. Although it was first published in 2008, it is still as relevant today. And it’s made an impact on how organisations think. Organisations such as governments. I’ll paraphrase their example to explain. Let’s pretend that you run your local secondary school’s self-service canteen.… Read More »
…has got to be early parenthood. The arrival of that new addition to your family puts pay to even the best laid plans, regardless of how prepared you may think you are. Having experienced it myself in the last few weeks, I’ve been responding to both the physical and emotional changes it brings. How do… Read More »