There are lots of ‘health check models’ out there. Most of them attempt to summarise and visualise how teams are doing, and seek areas of improvements. They are sometimes run by managers, sometimes by coaches, sometimes by teams in workshops. Over the years, I have discarded approaches that ‘score’ teams… Read More »Health checks
The principles behind the agile manifesto are clear in their message on collaboration: “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.” Yet, there are still companies out there where the visions of the development teams and business teams do not align. They either have different targets or they simply haven’t taken… Read More »Alignment a.k.a Collaboration
So we’ve come to the end of yet another ‘sprint’ known as a year. Each 365 day sprint seems to go by quicker each time. Traditionally this is the time of year when we retrospect on how the last 12 months have gone and we come up with a ‘resolution’… Read More »My new year’s evolution
It’s time to throw out that Christmas CD. Seriously, I don’t want to listen to Lennon’s So This Is Christmas ever again. The alternative? Our tongue-in-cheek agile and lean-related playlist. It was born during lunch at this year’s Kanban retreat in Lisbon. Even Flow by Pearl Jam was an early… Read More »Scrum & Kanban playlist
I’ve been attending stand ups for the better part of 10 years. I’ve been to some good ones, some bad ones and some really bad ones. More recently, I’ve been helping the teams I work with now, to get more value from them. We encouraged ourselves to think about what… Read More »Are You Getting Value From Stand Ups?
The definition of constraint in English: NOUN A limitation or restriction (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/constraint) The systems that we work in often face limitations or restrictions. These can stop us efficiently reaching our goals. What is the Theory of Constraints? The Theory of Constraints, created by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and illustrated in… Read More »Theory of Constraints
How much information can a triangle give you? Well, if it’s on a CFD (‘Cumulative Flow Diagram’), then it appears to be quite a lot. After sitting in a presentation recently, someone came up to me to ask how changes in WIP, Cycle Time and Delivery Rate alter the shape of… Read More »Little’s Law and CFDs
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software” As we all know this is the first principle behind the Agile Manifesto. But how do we understand the value of the things we are working on and delivering? And why would we want… Read More »Cost of Delay
The Iron Triangle There’s a concept that we frequently use in development called the iron triangle. The concept is that there are three factors: time cost (usually meaning people) scope It’s okay to have one or two of these fixed, but definitely not all three; at least one of these… Read More »The Iron Pyramid
As Jeff Sutherland finished describing how important the burndown chart had been in the creation of Scrum, I started feeling guilty for my previous attacks [on burndowns, not on Jeff]. But then I started thinking of examples of how burndowns can easily fail to reflect reality. Even if we ignore… Read More »Burndown versus CFD
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