Hey Coach! Square Peg
Monday, October 10, 2016 by Philippe Sauve
Welcome back to the coaching post that looks at teams and the complex environment around us. This time we shall discuss the not-too-controversial topic of keeping track of work.Too often, tracking time and logging work related information has been used to enforce work schedules and dishing out “punishment” to those who don’t put in the hours. Here we describe “puni...
Beyond Scaling Agile Going Back to the Basics
Tuesday, August 16, 2016 by Louis-Philippe Carignan
It has now been 15 years since the Agile manifesto has come to life. The first decade of Agile showed a strong adoption of engineering practices and Scrum, demonstrating Agile was a viable approach at the team level to deliver business value. The last 5 years have seen a shift, focusing on scaling Agile at the IT department or even the whole organization. Solutions...
5 Reasons Your Daily Scrum is Boring
Wednesday, August 10, 2016 by Ben Day
When you ask someone “what’s Scrum?”, probably 9 times out of 10 they’ll start telling you about the Daily Scrum meeting. Maybe they call it the “standup” or the “daily” or the “daily standup” but they’re talking about that meeting that you’re supposed to have every day if you’re doing Scrum. Oh…and they almost invariably say that that meeting is “boring” or...
Scrum.org Announces Significant Updates to Its Professional Scrum Master Assessment and Certification
Tuesday, August 2, 2016 by Stuart Parkerson
Scrum.org has announced a restructuring of its Professional Scrum Master (PSM) assessment and certification products, as well as adding a new, additional level to the certification program. The purpose of these changes are to enhance the level of Scrum training and more clearly delineate certifications provided to Professional Scrum practitioners to demonstrate mor...
How Do I Build an Agile Organization Part 3
Thursday, July 28, 2016 by Ken Schwaber
Remember the angry development VP from Part 1? He had hired a certified Scrum Master and found him inadequate. This VP made the assumption that the CSM certification meant the person was qualified to help his organization. He found out it only meant the person was certified as having attended a Scrum Alliance scrum master class.In Part 2, I presented the steps...
Tips for Scaling Retrospectives
Monday, July 11, 2016 by Rich Visotcky
Having a retrospective is an important part of the inspect/adapt loop for any team. No matter the batch size of your work, from one item at a time to a month’s worth of work, it can be helpful for people to periodically and regularly look at how they’re operating and ask what they could change in their personal or work process to make things a bit better. That self intr...
Using the Right Agile Tool for the Job
Wednesday, June 29, 2016 by Mark Noneman
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!" Huh? I don’t know; it’s something my father always said. I think he meant that if you don’t have the right tool for the job, you’ll use the tool you have. And if it’s the wrong tool, the job will suffer. Agile frameworks are tools of a sort. You might say that Scrum is like a wrench - requirin...
Hey Coach! My Kind of Commitment
Tuesday, June 21, 2016 by Philippe Sauve
Before we start this new article of "Hey Coach!", let me discuss a few points from my first article “How do I Get People to Do What I Want”. In writing that first article, I knew that it was a bit controversial to discuss the topic, but I did anyway. As benign or controversial as it may seem, I was in no way saying that a coach should tell people what to do, ...
You'll Have Debt Get Used to it!
Thursday, May 26, 2016 by Louis-Philippe Carignan
In the classic The Mythical Man-Month, author Fred Brooks speaks of the intricacies of software development. This collection of essays is a must read for any IT professional, particularly when the reader learns about the concept behind Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project actually makes it later. While many other intricacies o...
Why Agile Will Work This Time
Monday, May 9, 2016 by Ravi Verma
The Burning QuestionLast year, I was facilitating a workshop on Agile and began the conversation, as usual, with introductions. I asked each attendee what was the most important, burning question that brought them to the workshop. One of the attendees replied -“We have been trying to introduce Agile to our company for so many years and it does not seem to have help...
About SelfOrganizing Teams
Monday, April 11, 2016 by Clementino de Mendonca
A question from a budding Scrum Master, who is transitioning from a background as a traditional project manager:“In order to promote team bonding and self-organization, from now on I am going to try something new with the team. In the sprint planning meeting, instead of me breaking down the tasks for user stories between each team member, I am going to just identify tas...
How Do I Build an Agile Organization Part 2
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 by Ken Schwaber
How can I find qualified Scrum help? “The Professional Scrum Master® (PSM® I) Certification (learn more here) from Scrum.Org is one of the most valuable agile certifications in the market. The greater the depth and extent of knowledge needed to earn a certificate, the greater its value. By this measure, the PSM assessments are significantly mo...
Hey Coach! How Do I Get People to Do What I Need
Thursday, March 24, 2016 by Philippe Sauve
In this edition of “Hey Coach!” we will discuss this critical question: “How do I get people to do what I need?”Maybe an obvious question - since by definition, this should be a core capability of coaches. Except that on many occasions I have heard it time and time again. Since the fall of our love affair with the word “Control”, people have found new ways to expre...
Worrying Interpretations of Scrum
Tuesday, March 22, 2016 by Gunther Verheyen
Over 80% of all Agile teams worldwide indicate they have adopted Scrum. The mission of Scrum.org is to improve the profession of software development. We are humbled by the improvement Scrum has brought to the industry. We find motivation in continuing the path of maturing the understanding of Scrum around the world. Scrum is outgrowing its teenage years - in ...
The 9 Smells of an Organization
Tuesday, March 15, 2016 by Barry Overeem
A few months ago I first watched ”The Smell of the Place,” a speech by Prof. Sumantra Ghoshal. It's about corporate environments and the faults of management in creating a positive workplace. In organizations, it's all about the context. This has a huge impact on the behavior of employees. "Changing people's behavior is not about changing people, but chan...
The Agile Mnemonic
Monday, March 7, 2016 by Louis-Philippe Carignan
Mnemonic Definition:“Aiding or designed to aid the memory”I have often been in situation where people want a summary of Agile. Being too busy with work (and life), they want it straight and simple so they can have something quick and easy which they can recall when we talk about Agile. Even at the end of a class, I have met students who look for a simple way to remember...
How Do I Build an Agile Organization Part 1
Thursday, March 3, 2016 by Ken Schwaber
This is the first in a three article series on how to build an Agile organization. This first article discusses: “What is Scrum certification? Can you count on it as meaningful in selecting people?”- CIOs need to embrace Agile development as quickly as possible. Agile has the capability to transform IT-business relationships as well as have a positive effect on IT value...
Fanatic Discipline is Critical to Success for Agile Transformation
Monday, February 29, 2016 by Mehmet Yitmen
In Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen’s book Great by Choice, a comparison is made between two expeditions to Antarctica in 1911. One of the expeditions mentioned is that of Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian who was first to step on the South Pole. The other is the tragic expedition of Robert Falcon Scott, which happened at around the same time but, unfortunately ended ...
The Product Owner Role When Scaling Scrum
Tuesday, February 23, 2016 by Derek Davidson
A Scrum team is made up of a Product Owner, development team and Scrum master. This model works incredibly well at the team level. But what happens to the Product Owner role when we scale up? Product Owner at the Single Team Level The Scrum guide is a model of precise and clarity. In only 17 pages (16 if you exclude the end note and acknowledgements) it descri...
