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…
Tag: Lean
Utilization and the Myth of Shared Resources
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the chance to work with several organizations who equate “efficiency” with “utilization.” This morning, I tweeted that if your organization is assigning people 10% to a project, no agile method is going to help you. Renae Ramirez asked for data or evidence supporting the point that this…
Story Points Are Dead! (Long Live Story Points?)
(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…
Root Cause and “5 Why’s”
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…
The Keys to the Kingdom
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…
Post Agile Companies
Post Agile. I first heard the term several weeks ago in Chicago. It was used to define companies who had started up from 2005 onward. Companies who had been versed in the Agile Manifesto, who understood Lean Principles, to whom agile was second nature. These are companies doing Scrum – Daily Standups, Product Backlogs, Scrum…
Tools for Agility and Lean/Kanban Principles Presentations Now Available
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,…
Reward Systems and Organizational Change
Most of us don’t give much thought into what happens if our house catches fire. We call 911, the firefighters come in their shiny red (or green, or yellow) trucks, pull some hoses, spray some water, and then we call our insurance agent and begin rebuilding. But there is a lot of training and preparation…
Change your organization, or change your organization
Dawn Cannan has a great post up called Change your organization, or change your organization. This is a phrase I use quite often to people, and something I struggled with because of this very thing: There are many techniques for pushing through resistance, but how can you tell a fight that isn’t winnable? Or, at…
For Value Blockage, Take Some X-LACKS
This week, I had the distinct pleasure of co-presenting with the ever lovable Mitch Lacey at the Agile Development Practices conference in Orlando. I also got the chance to have a great conversation with Alan Shalloway about the state of Scrum and the Scrum Alliance, and to run into Alistair Cockburn. This got me thinking…