5 July 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Michael Sahota as Awesome Coach of the Week 27, 2011!
I first met Michael Sahota at the XPDays Benelux 2010. I had heard his name before, but not much about him… A funny connection was our first topic of conversation: A colleague of mine from Berlin had moved to Toronto in the Summer, and had been looking for a job as a ScrumMaster there. Tuesday before the XPDays we chatted on Skype, and she told me she had just signed a contract: “And do you know what’s really funny? You’ll meet my boss in two days!” That was not Michael, but a friend of him in Toronto, and ...
4 July 2011
Author:
Marion Eickmann
Have you ever wondered how companies like Facebook or Google can develop new working features at such a crazy pace, while others take forever to release shaky software?Answer: they’re using an Agile approach that includes state-of-the-art technical practices. Here you can find the major agile practices in a short but ...
Marion Eickmann
I am one of the founders of agile42. Even though I am not an engineer I
consider myself almost a "Techi" as I have been working in the field of
software development for 10 years now.
- On
- 4 July 2011
- In
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Scrum,
Scrum & XP,
agile
Have you ever wondered how companies like Facebook or Google can develop new working features at such a crazy pace, while others take forever to release shaky software?
Answer: they’re using an Agile approach that includes state-of-the-art technical practices. Here you can find the major agile practices in a short but detailed overview.
Agile Practices in a Nutshell
1 July 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Sebastian Schürmann as awesome coach of the week 26, 2011!
I first met Sebastian Schürmann at the ScrumGathering 2009 in Munich. We’ve been in touch on Twitter since and met again at Play4Agile in February and the AgileCoachCamp two weeks ago. This week, I’ve been at his company and could gain first-hand experience of his awesome achievements…
(Non-)Violent Communication
Sebastian is a man of strong opinion and blunt communication. To phrase it differently, he’s a natural talent of violent communication—which can be quite effective…
At the ACCDE11, we both attended a session on non-violent communication. We talked a lot about that technique during the ...
24 June 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour J. B. Rainsberger as awesome coach of the week 25, 2011!
I met J. B. Rainsberger at the XP2011 conference in Madrid, only a few weeks ago. We’ve been connected on Twitter since and I must say we resonate in a way as it seldom happens to me… So, what's special and awesome about @JBRains?
Wisdom for Life
JBrains retired at the age of 34. Not because he was so rich. He calculated the units of lifetime he invested per dollar earned and didn’t like the result. He evaluated his and his wife’s actual needs and discovered they differed a lot from those surmised previously. They didn ...
17 June 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Yves Hanoulle as Awesome Coach of the Week 24, 2011!
Yves Hanoulle has been one of the first people I met whom I identified as an agile coach. From the many amazing people I met at the AgileCoachCamp Germany, he was one of the few where I noticed they asked questions rather than gave answers… And he’s been a role model for me in the way he intensively connects to the international community.
PairCoaching
One of the hardest challenges for a coach is how to replenish your energy, and, more important, where from. Coaching in pairs and working in a team of coaches is the most efficient way to ...
11 June 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Marc Scrumphony Löffler as Awesome Coach of the Week 23, 2011!
Marc ‘Scrumphony’ Löffler is one of the most prominent members of the German Agile Coaching community, and the one I reckon to be the most internationally active. He’s frequently speaking at international agile (un)conferences and gatherings and well connected on Twitter. I’ve first met Marc at last year’s AgileCoachCamp Germany and immediately fell in love with his mad humour, which he applies to quite serious topics. A quite sensible approach to life, I think.
Food for Thought
A few weeks ago Marc started a series of blog posts called “Food for Thought”. I loved the ...
31 May 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Jens Hoffmann as Awesome Coach of the Week 22, 2011!
Jens Hoffmann is an “integrative thinker, complexity wrangler, service designer, project team whisperer and team coach.”
(taken from his Twitter profile)
I first met him in 2009 at a boring conference where he facilitated a get-to-know session with 100 people—using LEGO®!
15 Years of Experience in Scrum
We started to talk in the break, continued in the next break (my talk about PRINCE2™ and Scrum was in between so I had to interrupt) and then through the rest of the day... Did I mention it was a boring conference?
Jens is the coach with the longest experience of using ...
25 May 2011
Author:
Marion Eickmann
Virtual Tour of an Embedded Agile Team
Marion Eickmann
I am one of the founders of agile42. Even though I am not an engineer I
consider myself almost a "Techi" as I have been working in the field of
software development for 10 years now.
- On
- 25 May 2011
- In
-
Scrumtisch Berlin
Hello together :-)
The Scrumtisch Berlin proudly presents Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
Topic of the Scrumtisch
Virtual Tour of an Embedded Agile Team
Embedded systems development holds challenges that include software tightly coupled to evolving hardware, an end customer who usually cannot interact with you, and a long period of infrastructure building before any business-value features are built. These challenges have convinced many embedded developers that Agile is not for them. This presentation takes you on a virtual tour of an actual Agile team developing software and firmware for a safety-critical embedded system. We follow their first iteration. We’ll look at ...
23 May 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Liz Keogh as Awesome Coach of the Week 21, 2011!
Liz Keogh is a passionate lean and agile coach and trainer and one of the most prominent UK members of the agile and lean community. She's become famous for her work on BDD, which in my opinion is driven by her amazing language skills: Liz is a wordsmith in the true sense of the word...
Words
I first met Liz at the 2009 ScrumGathering in Munich. She was teaching a group of geeks how to write Haiku. I had not done this before and it was great fun; as well as a good way to think about how we ...
19 May 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
Why does your project need a product backlog? Or, does it actually need one, and why? A discussion on Twitter led me to these ponderings... As always, I'm very interested in your thoughts!
Olaf Lewitz
agile42 Coach.
Visiting Business Influencer and Linchpin.
My motto is that of NannyMcPhee: "When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go."
- On
- 19 May 2011
- In
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Scrum
- Tags
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backlog,
bdd,
lean,
pull,
waste
Is A Backlog Waste? Yes. A backlog is inventory and inventory is waste. Simple question.
Does that Help?
No. Depending on your system, some amount of waste will be necessary to be able to keep the flow. Where would you pull stories from if there is no backlog? Directly out of the product owner's mind?
Context
If you need a backlog and how much of it depends mainly on two factors:
- the experience of your team and the product's stakeholders (including the level of trust between them), a.k.a. the maturity of your system, and
- the context ...
