All articles about Scrum

Agile Transitioning, Blog, General, General Agile

Philosophy Versus Practice

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When trying to get waterfall teams and organizations to move to a more Agile development methodology there are two training strategies – philosophy and practice.

The philosophical approach relies on teaching the history of software development and the philosophy behind Agile – the manifesto and principles. This approach assumes that as long as one is equipped with the proper overriding principles then one will be able to make the correct decisions as challenges occur.

The practice strategy relies heavily on training the ceremonies, especially scrum ceremonies like standups, retrospectives, reviews, etc. This approach assumes that if you do the rights things that overtime the reasons for the practices will become apparent.

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Agile Team, Blog

Looking for Agile Success – All You Need is Love

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Like any professional should I spend a great deal of my time attending user’s groups, reading professional articles, speaking with leaders in my field, etc in an attempt to find ways to do my job better. This morning I stumbled upon a couple of interesting articles, The Unintended Consequences Of A Leader’s Lack Of Trust (whose link has gone inactive) and Employees leave managers, not companies. While not exactly writing about the love, these got me to thinking about love and its place fostering Agility.

It is the nature of my job to bond tightly with the teams that I work with and also to have to leave these teams frequently, as they achieve a high level of self organization, to pursue opportunities to help other teams. I am currently faced with one of these moments and the feeling, as always, is bittersweet. I am excited about my new opportunity but will genuinely miss the teams I have worked with over the past few months.

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Blog, General, General Agile

Not Building a Car – The Need for More Appropriate Similes in Software Development

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As humans we learn by analogy, metaphor and simile, adding new knowledge by initially relating the new to our existing understanding of the world. When we try to explain the software development process to the initiated (translation business stake holders), we use all kinds of similes to help them understand the process. The problem with similes is that they argue that something is like something else and many times people confuse the similes with metaphor, thinking that one thing is another. Not only do people confuse simile with metaphor, but many of the similes we use in explaining software development are not appropriate because they can cause more harm than good and they are not very accurate in their explanation.

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Agile Coaching, Blog, General, General Agile, Leadership

Thoughts on Agile Coaching

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When I tell people I am an Agile Coach, unless they are in IT, I tend to get a lot of strange looks. Most of the time they will say something like, “I get the coaching part, but what the heck is Agile?” It is at this part of the conversation that they experience immediate regret as I launch into an endless barrage of commentary on Agile development.

Lately, however, I have begun to re-examine my own assumptions about what it the Coaching aspect of an Agile Coach is, especially now that there are so many professional coaches looking for work after the end of the regular NFL season.

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Agile Development, Blog, General Agile

Recent Agile Speaking Engagements

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Boy it’s been some time since I have blogged! I have been busy with all things business, personal and have had a great number of recent speaking engagements with any free time I have been able to find. I am passionate about Agile and love the opportunity that speaking brings.

My most recent gigs included a bunch of talks when my body was suffering a annoying fall head cold.

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Agile Management, Blog

Are You a Scrum Master? Be a Gardener.

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I have recently been reading Jurgen Appelo’s book Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders. For those wondering what management’s role in an Agile organization should be then this is a good read.

In my current consulting gig I am coaching someone to replace me as a scrum master so we spend a great deal of time talking about Agile, Scrum and what it means to be a scrum master.

One of the things I have always used as a metaphor is the concept of Scrum Master (and managers) as gardeners. Though I may have heard it somewhere and forgot it or it may have reached my subconscious somehow, I came up with the metaphor of gardener because my in-laws live with me and are retired. They spend a great deal of time gardening. It is from their work bringing forth trees, flowers and mountains of vegetables that I took my cue.

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Agile Development, Blog, Leadership

The Reason Your Agile Implementation will Fail

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I have had the good fortune of managing Agile (scrum) implementations at a number of different companies over the years. I have had some great success and some implementations that were not so great. While not unique, my experience is such that I have enough data points to start seeing patterns, especially patterns of failure. That is, while I cannot confidently tell you what will most certainly work in your particular situation, I am eminently qualified to tell you what will not work.

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