Avatars, graphical representations of real people, adorn agile boards across the globe. Using everything from South Park characters to super-heroes, they rarely look like their owners, and move across white boards like figures from a Dungeons & Dragons game. How pathetic! Grow up. I bet you dress up like your… Read More »Avatars
I’m convinced that Kanban works very well for service desks and other response-based teams. For these teams, planning two weeks’ work up front just doesn’t make sense. Similarly, I can see why people might think that Scrum works best for projects: iterations give great visibility and regular milestones at which… Read More »Scrum or Kanban?
What makes a good user story? Is it as simple as just following the format advocated by many Scrum practitioners: As a <who>, I want <what> so that <why> For example: as a user I want to be able to add a product to a wishlist so that I can… Read More »What makes a good user story?
“There is something you should understand about the way I work. When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go. It’s rather sad, really, but there it is.” ~ Nanny McPhee The… Read More »Self-organising teams: why today’s ScrumMaster is like Nanny McPhee
“I’ve found iteration burndown charts to be extremely useful with iteration lengths of two weeks or more.” ~ Mike Cohn in Agile Estimating and Planning “I’ve found burndown charts frustrating, irritating and misleading.” ~ Me on a regular basis when they are discussed Mike Cohn goes on to say “An… Read More »Burning the burndown chart
In a recent LADG meeting, I realised why middle-management are sometimes reluctant to embrace agile: it’s because they have to accept an element of responsibility for the team’s output. With waterfall, the manager declares what he or she wants, then sits back and let’s the team commit to deliver the project by… Read More »Why old-school middle management prefers waterfall
“I don’t like the word commitment”, started Bob in a retrospective, “I don’t feel it’s fair that I’m promising the business the delivery of something that I have no control over [because there was work in the sprint that Bob would not be working on]. I’d prefer to use a… Read More »Commitment issues
I seem to be encountering more and more people who say stuff like “We were using Scrum but X didn’t work for us, so we stopped using it”. Let’s be clear about this: there is no single implementation of Scrum. Or Kanban. Or any other agile/lean framework. As Dan Brown… Read More »Scrum is a framework, not a directive
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