Author Archives: Ed

“Hitting the wall” with your Agile Adoption? Try adding technical practices…

This is a great post that uses the familiar metaphor of the gym and physical fitness to apply to adopting Agile. I’ve seen the pattern described here too often. Developers start out the first three sprints and produce production ready … Continue reading

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The connection between sailing and software

I wrote this post about sailing “inside” vs “outside” the boat. I learned much from participating as a crew member on a sailing team. It positively influenced my work with software teams, as I’m sure any team sport would. Tweet

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Bay Area Agile Philanthropy Group

A group of folks interested in using agile values and principles to give back to the community is going to meet in January to charter the Bay Area Agile Philanthropy User Group (BAAPUG). This will be on January 17 at … Continue reading

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How will we demo?

If you are struggling with concrete enough acceptance criteria, acceptance criteria that doesn’t specify the “how”, just the “what”, one technique that I find especially helpful is specifying “How will we demo?” to the story. This usually puts the product … Continue reading

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Restickable Glue Stick – Another reason 3M has a stranglehold on the Scrum Community

I like 3M post-it notes for sprint and release planning. It makes it really easy to have multiple people interact with stories and tasks. Unlike electronic tools, I don’t become a bottleneck for planning. However, I’m not against electronic tools.  … Continue reading

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David Anderson Speaks at Bay Area APLN

I attended a special meeting of the Bay area APLN chapter. David Anderson gave a talk on his recipe for success with Agile. Here are the notes. It was a good talk. I especially liked his description of how he … Continue reading

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Planning Poker Timer

Timers are valuable when you want to timebox a discussion. I’ve used this planning poker timer when I’m with a team and we are planning our iteration. I also use it when setting 30 minute work goals for myself. It … Continue reading

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Distributed Cognition, marrying GTD with Agile Collaboration tools

This article by Francis Heylighen and Clément Vidal points out an interesting opportunity to leverage the concepts of external cognition tools like David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology to assist in the working world for a collaborative environment that supports … Continue reading

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Use Parallel tracks for user experience work

At the APLN Leadership Summit I was fortunate enough to attend a track led by Arlen Bankston and Jeff Patton that discussed some of the patterns and practices that are beginning to emerge for incorporating user experience into the agile … Continue reading

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Bucketing stories for quick estimation

So, you’ve been running a few sprints, you have a velocity and a backlog. The trouble is your team tends to estimate your stories in your planning meetings and it really drags the meeting on for a long time. Never … Continue reading

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