Author archives: ralfkruse81
5 December 2011
ralfkruse81
The focus of the 4th lesson was on the product owner side. The preparation and organization of the work on the product is crucial for the success of product development. In small groups the students walked trough the whole process of creating a good vision and preparing & organizing the product backlog.
We started by building a product box to foster the ideas. It brought creativity and fun into this exercise and allowed to establish the foundation for a great vision. Here are some impressions of the product box exercise to build the vision:
From the vision we moved on by highlighting those requirements that represent our product differentiators.
The students then, starting from those requiremetns, created user stories and placed them into the Product Backlog. To structure it we used requirements and Minimal Marketable Features (MMFs). The MMFs are used to build minimal sets of functionality (by grouping together user stories ...
23 November 2011
ralfkruse81
In the second lesson I built awareness among the students that a common goal, good communication and teamwork is crucial for the success of a project. Therefore we played the agile42 Scrum Lego City Game.
We formed three teams, who worked together to build a Scrum Lego City.
In fixed timeboxes and with a clear vision, the teams made 3 sprints in order to build the city. They made a Sprint Planning and an estimation but the first sprint was a disaster. A lot of half done User Stories, there where no real integrated results and a lot of wrong assumptions about what was expected.
Why? Because they only worked together as individuals but not together as a team. Everybody was doing what he thought would be best. No right communication and no common understanding ...
24 October 2011
ralfkruse81
Software is getting more and more complex and a lot of projects fail. The students experienced this problem simple exercise: The marshmallow challenge. The students had to build a tower out of spaghettis, cover-tape, a string and with a marshmallow on top in a fixed timebox of 18 minutes.
Well, the exercise worked out as expected. Three of four teams had no tower at the end. Pretty comparable to real software projects :-)
What happend?:
I gave them a complex environment with fixed circumstances and rules. Instead of trying and failing fast and often, they discussed nearly until the timebox was over or they added the marshmallow in the last second and the tower broke under the weight.
After also some other interactive sessions like the well known ball point game the students got the message and learned:
- Assumptions lead to wrong results - proof them fast and often
- Build your ...
17 October 2011
ralfkruse81
When I studied „Computer Science“, I did not learn much about agile software development, although, according to my curriculum I should have.Now, being an Agile Coach, I like to go back to the roots, helping “Agility” to become a part of the universities topics. My old university, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), gives me the chance to do so.
As we all know a lot of projects failed in the past for various reason. Agile methods like Scrum seems to help solving that issue and therefore more and more companies start moving in the agile direction. My goal is to give the students an understanding of agile beyond the pure mechanics, so that they are learning the theory as well as real ways to work agile in order to prepare them for the real work environments.
In the lecture we will see and experience well known agile approaches like Scrum and Kanban, get an understanding of their background (Lean ...
23 September 2011
fivancsich
,
ralfkruse81
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 ...
19 August 2011
ralfkruse81
We honor Bob Sarni as Awesome Coach of the Week 33, 2011
I had the opportunity to work closely with Bob on a large enterprise transition. Bob has a great way to deal with people. He used to be an excellent contributor to the success of a project we did together. - During these four months in Greece, I learned a lot from him.
Leading people
I can’t remember that Bob ever used a phrase like “you do this”. He has a great way of leading by questions and from the back of the room. One special case where he impressed me a lot was during a planning meeting. There was nothing ...
16 August 2011
ralfkruse81
Another great Scrumtisch in Berlin Friedrichshain in a new location - 100Wasser. Various peoples from different companies and backgrounds interested in participating in discussions on Scrum came together. The hottest topic was the merging of Scrum with Kanban, but we also talked about the Sprint to Zero Problem and How ...
Another great Scrumtisch in Berlin Friedrichshain in a new location - 100Wasser. Various peoples from different companies and backgrounds interested in participating in discussions on Scrum came together. The hottest topic was the merging of Scrum with Kanban, but we also talked about the Sprint to Zero Problem and How to fight Bad Scrum.
As usual we started collecting topics (timeboxed to five minutes). The list according to your votes (in brackets) was as follows:
- Experiences with Scrum and Kanban (14)
- Sprint to Zero (12)
- How to Fight Bad Scrum (11)
- Stories and Epics - How far to plan ahead (10)
- Distributed ...
11 May 2011
ralfkruse81
In many cases checklists help; but other people feel patronized by too detailed checklists. People stop thinking about what is the intent behind them and ask “why does it make sense to do it in this way?”
If people have to find their own actions based on the expectations and requirements, they really own their solution. Checklists they create are seen as a tool that helps them to do their work instead of being patronized by others. If people have a clear understanding of the expectations and are empowered to take the right actions, they can adjust their solutions to the current situation and needs more easily.
For instance, if a team has to use a strict template for a certain type of document, to provide information for maintenance for support, they will always deliver it in ...
5 May 2011
ralfkruse81
There are some questions asked by Product Owners and they have a simple answer: “Ask the team!”
There are some questions asked by Product Owners
... and they have a simple answer: “Ask the team!”
Story good enough for the Sprint
When a PO ask: “Is the user story good enough, that it can be taken in the sprint?” or “Does this user story have enough acceptance criteria?”
The answer to this question is “Ask the team!”
The team will work with the story, so the story has to be good enough that the team can work with it.
For a story to be good enough for the sprint it has to be small (6 to 10 stories ...
20 April 2011
ralfkruse81
We honour Paolo “Nusco” Perrotta as Awesome Coach of the Week 16, 2011!
Paolo came to mind as the second coach who earns the Awesome Coach of the Week award by writing the awesome comment about our first laureate, Richard Lawrence.
Ruby
As with Richard, one contribution of Nusco is very obvious when you read his blog: He's a Ruby guy. I've read a bunch of books about programming, heard about many more, but I have to think hard to come up with any one title that I've seen recommended as often as
Metaprogramming Ruby. Thinking in Java comes to mind, but I think that's from another century... I ...
Ralf Kruse
