David Shaw03/26/13
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0 replies
An office might not seem like an unhealthy working environment when compared to factories and car garages. Working in an office demands sitting for long periods of time working in front of a computer which means comfort and right posture is of the utmost importance.
Gil Zilberfeld03/26/13
1369 views
0 replies
It was the nth time that a supplier has failed us. If we analyze it logically, there were two options: Get mad or roll with the punches. Since we’re not Vulcan, it’s not really a logical choice: what we felt is anger, defeat. Or both.
Tom Howlett03/26/13
1302 views
1 replies
I’m firm believer in the people doing the work being in the best position to discover the changes needed. Since most waste comes from the interactions and relationships between people, we need to bring all people working as part of the value stream together.
Martin Fowler03/25/13
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0 replies
I've heard a couple of questions recently about coming up with a standard story point mechanism for multiple teams using extreme programming's planning approach. The hope is have several teams all using equivalent story points, so that three story points of effort on one team is the same as on another.
Tobias Mayer03/25/13
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0 replies
The CEO has a noble goal. And he has a lousy technique for getting there. As employees we can seek to draw such people into dialog, rather than pandering to their anger.
Esther Derby 03/25/13
814 views
0 replies
I’ve seen a number of organizations decentralize control and decision making, only to pull it back to the home office. If you watch long enough, many of these companies after experiencing centralized control for a while, go back to decentralized control–like a pendulum swinging back and forth.
Johanna Rothman03/25/13
1229 views
0 replies
Thinking is work. Not all work occurs when fingers touch a keyboard. Not all work occurs when mouths are open and moving. Even I have learned to sometimes think with my mouth shut, although that is an infrequent occurrence.
Johannes Brodwall03/24/13
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In the exercise, each group creates a bare-bones web server in a programming language of their choice and register its URL with the workshop server on my computer. The workshop server then starts asking each registered web server questions over http. In the beginning of the competition, the workshop participants don’t know anything.
Mitch Pronschinske03/24/13
1535 views
0 replies
Josh has been creating great technology products for more than 20 years. A UX design leader, Josh has worked in hardware and software, consumer and enterprise, mobile, web, and desktop. He was head of product design at Wall Street innovator Liquidnet, and lead pioneering interaction design teams at Cooper.
Cagdas Basaraner03/23/13
21445 views
1 replies
10 quick hit techniques with a short bit of advice that can make your Scrum practices so much better. Check this list out for sure!
Steve Smith03/23/13
6182 views
0 replies
Technical stories with demonstrable business value are rare, but can and should be prioritized with user stories
Mike Cohn03/22/13
1284 views
1 replies
The topic of how well a team estimates two point stories relative to one point stories (and so on) has come up in a couple of comments and replies on this blog recently, so let's discuss it. Here's a graph showing relevant data from one company.
Kane Mar03/22/13
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0 replies
I have devised five questions that I intend to put to some of the leading lights in the Scrum industry, either famous, infamous or just those with a raft of experience. The questions are Scrum related and by asking them I hope to provide an insight into how these people think and what they think about Scrum.
Roman Pichler03/22/13
1978 views
0 replies
Viewing the product backlog as a learning tool facilitates the development of successful products. But it requires overcoming the misconception that the requirements of a new product can be correctly determined upfront.
Venkatesh Kris...03/22/13
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0 replies
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work closely with Craig Larman. I consider Craig not only a great coach but a teacher and facilitator. Craig has gone through the rigorous process of becoming a professional coach. However, most ScrumMasters and agile coaches are not so lucky.
Jurgen Appelo03/21/13
3429 views
3 replies
I see it again and again. The suggestion of systems thinkers and Agile writers to stop blaming people and instead try blaming the system.
Steve Smith03/21/13
2460 views
1 replies
When splitting a story into tasks, it’s important to remember motivation. Regardless of agile flavour, we split stories into testable tasks so that developers can continuously check in production-ready feature increments, and testers can continuously contribute feedback on the current story.
Mike Cottmeyer03/21/13
2301 views
0 replies
The proclamation by Marissa Mayer last month, informing Yahoo employees that working from home is no longer an option, really seemed to bring an important conversation front and center.
Tom Howlett03/21/13
1609 views
0 replies
I open the standup with no expectations of where it will go. We walk the board starting on the right. I read out the name of stories in turn and those who’ve been working on them happily or reluctantly report them done and ready to pull.
David Pollak03/20/13
3115 views
0 replies
Back in the day, I ran a small spreadsheet company, Athena Design that took on the big spreadsheet companies (Lotus, Informix) and won. I had a spectacularly stellar team.
James Betteley03/20/13
3769 views
0 replies
A business starts “Adopting Agile”, usually driven by the development team, where they start doing stand-ups and using a sprint board (this is phase 1) and somehow they are surprised when this doesn’t suddenly start producing profit. Clearly, “becoming Agile” isn’t as simple as that.
Johanna Rothman03/20/13
2757 views
0 replies
Now, it’s time to discuss what happens with program management on large programs, programs of nine teams or more.
Javier Manzano03/20/13
2136 views
0 replies
What is that “crap” of Ultra-Lean? Well, is just a silly name that I’ve just invented to describe the way I’m working.
A. Jesse Jiryu Davis03/19/13
5168 views
0 replies
At our annual meetings we have nerdy contests. Last year, rocket building. This year, Lego robots that we programmed to push each other off a table.
Johanna Rothman03/19/13
1147 views
0 replies
Managers, especially senior managers, want people to be “invested” and “motivated” to do a great job. Often, the only measure they have for that is to see people work overtime. Why?
