Tag Archives: Scrum

Leading from the Middle

“The Key role of middle management is reinvention.” Tom DeMarco Often I hear of Agile Adoption best occurring top down. Salesforce.com did that, from zero to Agile overnight. Other times I hear about bottom up Agile , or Agile in … Continue reading

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“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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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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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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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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Agile Open Northwest

I attended Agile Open Northwest. It used a cool concept called open space. No set speakers, no powerpoints, no agenda. In the beginning, 120 people meet and some of them propose topics and then post the topic up on a … Continue reading

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Look who’s got a Lookahead Plan?

After seeing Mike Cohn’s presentation on Agile Estimation and Planning, I got very excited about a technique he described as lookahead planning. A lookahead plan is simply a quick look at the next couple sprints to determine what stories are … Continue reading

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How I do standups

Everyone has their own flavor of standups. Some do it standing up. Some do it sitting down. Some do it in a club with a microphone. I’ve never been that brave. For me, the scrum standup goes like this. I … Continue reading

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