Author archives: fivancsich
3 April 2013
Authors:
Franz Ivancsich
,
Ralf Kruse
,
Dave Sharrock
To the naive, Real Options sounds like salvation but they are a broken and evil concept proven to be wrong and the agile community should not embrace that
Franz Ivancsich
I am a true believer in agile, lean and yoga. Sometimes a prophet, sometimes a pirat.
Ralf Kruse
I'm an agile42 coach. Sometimes I'm excited and sometimes I feel more like Marvin ;-)
Follow me @ralfhh
Dave Sharrock
Agile coach passionate about organizational excellence. Follow me @davesharrock
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real options
Why I wrote this blogpost
I am an agile coach, but took some curves to get there, because I started my career as an investment banker. This is something I normally do not tell, because I am ashamed of the fact. I studied banking and finance and specialized in structured finance - that is the kind of complicated stuff where you put many derivative vehicles together, so that nobody can tell anymore that you included a premium that is ten times higher than the market average and sell them to naive people with enough money, mainly private banking customers. Another popular ...
5 July 2012
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
Planning is the art of predicting the future as accurately as possible by assuming that past events - which brought to a positive outcome - would happen again in the future if we are able to recreate the same conditions.
Long Term Planning
A good plan allows better decisions
Planning is the art of predicting the future as accurately as possible by assuming that past events - which brought to a positive outcome - would happen again in the future if we are able to recreate the same conditions. You could argue about the past being a good reference to make prediction about the future. I like to see it in a pragmatic way: as human beings, we base almost all our decisions about the future on what we have learned in the past. So far at least, the past has proven ...
14 June 2012
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
Tips for the beginner Product Owner: How many PO? We are the many! How many Product Owners do you need? Basically, this article is about why it is a bad idea trying to counter a dysfunctional situation by adding more people to the job. A phenomenon that I encountered often ...
Tips for the beginner Product Owner: How many PO?
We are the many! How many Product Owners do you need?
Basically, this article is about why it is a bad idea trying to counter a dysfunctional situation by adding more people to the job.
A phenomenon that I encountered often is that companies tend to hire more Product Owners when their setup with one does not seem to work. Can the reflex to just hire more people when the existing ones are not doing what is expected from them help?
Before we take a deeper look into what can go ...
2 December 2011
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
Embrace to fail fast! Product Owner @riskmanagement Most people are afraid to fail. Shame, is the core of the fear of failure, as psychology research (see Dr. Brené Brown @TED) concluded, which is quite intuitively understandable. Fearing failure is helping you to fail, it does nothing else than that. In ...
Embrace failing fast!
Product Owner @riskmanagement
Most people are afraid to fail. Shame is at the core of the fear of failure, psychologists say (see Dr. Brené Brown @TED). The problem with fearing failure, though, is that it does nothing but help you fail.
In our western culture, shame is a driver to get others to do things. By using shame and guilt as tools, we do not only burden us with an emotional baggage that is wearing us down emotionally, but we also create a lot of dysfunctions as we hide mistakes in order not to be blamed.
Transparency ...
16 November 2011
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
How long is your backlog? Many Product Owners I coached are obsessed by the length of their Product Backlog. While the fact that I only encountered three female Product Owners in my whole career, might explain parts of this phenomena, there is more to explore about this. A newbie Product ...
How long is your backlog?
Many Product Owners I coached are obsessed by the length of their Product Backlog. While the fact that I only encountered three female Product Owners in my whole career, might explain parts of this phenomena, there is more to explore about this.
A newbie Product Owner is often frightened about his backlog being too short. Having 15-20 User Stories ready for the next Sprint Planning is often hard for a beginner. After a while, it turns into an obsession, as a long Product Backlog gives a feeling of safety.
Guys, and the few Gals out ...
28 October 2011
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
Envision a vision for a better PO I want to point out that a vision is a necessity. The Product Owner is not going to do a good job without one. The product vision is not part of the Scrum framework. Nonetheless it is often mentioned in the Scrum literature ...
Envision a vision for a better PO
I want to point out that a vision is a necessity. The Product Owner is not going to do a good job without one. The product vision is not part of the Scrum framework. Nonetheless it is often mentioned in the Scrum literature as something that is a prerequisite.
In my experience, most companies lack a vision for their products. On rare occasions, there existed a product vision, but it led a gloomy existance in a dusty drawer.
A good product vision is short, concise, broad, understandable and most important - engaging! With a ...
10 October 2011
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
Only one Face to a team! It is simple as that. There should be only one Person talking to the development team about priority and things to do and that is the Product Owner. In literature, you will likely find the happy scenario, where the Product Owner and team are ...
Only one Face to a team!
It is simple as that. There should be only one Person talking to the development team about priority and things to do and that is the Product Owner.
In literature, you will likely find the happy scenario, where the Product Owner and team are working together without the hassles of real life. The Product Owner runs the Sprint Planning meeting and asks the team to commit to certain stories. After the Sprint, the Team will present what they have achieved at the Sprint Review.
So far, so good. But what if you have more ...
23 September 2011
Authors:
Franz Ivancsich
,
Ralf Kruse
The Kanban Pizza Game our new Game to experience principles behind Kanban
Most effective trainings are interactive! Therefore we invented the Kanban Pizza Game(TM) for our Kanban Training. We put it under the Creative Commons License, so you can use it for free just mention agile42 :-)
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
From the existing process to a Kanban System
While common Kanban games are usually focussing only on the flow in an existing Kanban system, our new Kanban Pizza Game shows in addition how to get from an existing process to a Kanban system.
Based on Paper and Pizza
Like with our agile42 Scrum Lego City Game we ...
25 August 2011
Author:
Franz Ivancsich
We honor Martin Kearns as Awesome Coach of the Week 34, 2011
I was very lucky to be present at a management coaching session where two very well known Scrum Coaches were performing: Andrea Tomasini and Martin Kearns. With this weekly post, we want to honor Martin Kearns.
Martin Kearns, the man
His vitae is impressive. - He is one of the first three CSC in the world and was also one of the first CST, he is breathing and sweating Agile. He is an irish guy living in Australia with his wife and six children (a family of the size of a Scrum Team). How he can manage to be a Scrum ...
