Organizational agility through intersecting business and technology
Happy Friday! This week’s #fasterfridays touches on one of the more challenging parts of software development – estimation. We talk about Planning Poker, and then touch on Team Estimation which approaches estimation from a different perspective with the same goals. If you’re interested in finding out how to apply this to your organization, don’t hesitate…
In a recent post, Jim Shore blogs about a “Minimum Viable Hypothesis.” With MVH, the first step after figuring out the problem to solve isn’t to create a minimum viable product. Instead, the first step is to brainstorm market hypotheses. Which groups have the desire and funds for a solution? What Jim is blogging about…
This afternoon I was teaching a public class on Lean-Agile principles and practices, and a question came up about the differences between Scrum and Kanban. As a fun exercise, I recreated Scrum using Kanban coupled with a set of Explicit Policies. To briefly summarize the differences, Scrum is a methodology which consists at its core…
(Alternate Subtitle: How the heck do you do estimation and forecasting in Kanban?) One of the biggest changes for many team who are adopting agile is in the way they slice, track and measure their work. They learn about “User Stories” which are sized using “Story Points”. The team adds up the number of Story…
This week, we’re working with a team in Atlanta, and we did an exercise today where the students went through problems they were having, and then the issues which underlie those problems. One of the interesting things was how often the underlying "issues" weren’t issues at all because they weren’t going deep enough. As an…
Oh the joys of not being in the grind. From this position I get to see all sorts of stuff about doing “Agile†right. Primarily from a Project Management perspective. But, I’ve got a secret. It’s one of them there plain-sight secrets that turns out to be how successful teams get things done. To us…
This past weekend I gave two sessions at the South Florida Code Camp – Tools for Agility and Lean and Kanban Principles for Developers. Both presentations are now available on Slideshare at the above links. If you would like more information, or would like to have Cory help your organization adopt these practices and principles,…
Want to really mess up your adoption of agile methods in your organization? Here are 10 mistakes I’ve come across with teams that will ensure an utter failure, Dilbert style. Not Reading the Principles of the Agile Manifesto – Everyone likes to quote (and misquote) the Agile Manifesto. But the manifesto is more than just…
<< Daily Scrum | Series Home | Retrospective After Every Sprint >> Ah, the Sprint Backlog. While not quite as visible as the Daily Scrum, the Sprint Backlog makes up the core trifecta of Scrum. And what developer wouldn’t love it? Every two weeks (or four weeks, or whatever iteration length you have) we’ll get…
<< Introduction | Series Home | Team Members Sit Together >> Perhaps the very first and most widely “adapted” practice in the Scrum world is that of the timeboxed iteration. Henrik’s Scrum Checklist identifies four subareas of concern: Iteration Length 4 weeks or less Always end on time Team not disrupted or controlled by outsiders…