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Category archives: Scrum & XP

I Think We Should Do «another fancy practice»

Every environment is different. Is the practice you want to try going to be helpful in yours?

On
23 April 2013
In
Scrum & XP, agile

As agile coaches, we frequently observe and get involved in discussions around practices, methods and tools. Many of these start with someone suggesting "I think we should try …".

Many of these discussions focus directly on the advantages of the specific method. Often, they lack focus on fitness for purpose or context. There are so many things that we could do. Many methods that work amazingly well for others. Is that enough to start trying them too?
We need to decide which method or tool is important and potentially useful for us in our environment, for our specific, current challenges. Discussions ...

Don't Panic!

Sometimes the most important thing I want to say to a manager or a Scrum master is, "Hey, calm down. Don't Panic!"

Sometimes the most important thing I want to say to a manager or a Scrum master is, "Hey, calm down. Don't Panic!"

Or as the Agile Manifesto folks said, "take some time to reflect."

I've watched Scrum masters and managers running around, and I picture them nervously clutching a clipboard crossing off items on a detailed plan to "do something."  (To be fair I haven’t seen an actual clipboard since I was the nervous, novice Scrum master running around with one!)

I know you want to do something.

And, here’s what you can do. Trust the ...

Feature Injection Applied to Service Delivery

What is Feature Injection? And how and why should that be applied to service delivery?

On
18 September 2011
In
Scrum, Scrum & XP
Tags
backlog, pull, real options, vision

Recently, I worked with a service delivery team in a company that is currently changing into an agile product development organisation. The company develops and runs one of Germany's biggest websites. Let's call them Awesome Online. After introducing Scrum and Kanban to all development teams over the past two years, executive and product management have started to introduce agile and lean thinking into the organisational structure and culture.

Motivation

A main motivational factor for the development teams was the definition of product visions for all products, and the application of Feature Injection as introduced by Liz Keogh to ...

Awesome Coach of the Week: Andreas Leidig

We honour Andreas Leidig as awesome coach of the week 31, 2011!

On
1 August 2011
In
Scrum & XP, agile, Awesome Coach of the Week
Tags
awesome, awesomecoachoftheweek, coach

I first met Andreas @leiderleider Leidig at last year’s AgileCoachCamp. Since then, we met at a few other (un)conferences, collaborated in organising a new one, helped the ALE network grow… In short, we became much more than colleagues. Having met Andreas at the Deutsche Scrum in Stuttgart the week before my holidays, I was reminded of a compliment by Sebastian Schürmann that I wrote about before…

Will Disobey Anyone If Required

Andreas takes this mindset to another level. If there was a word for “dogmatic about being undogmatic”, I’d use it for him:–)
Andreas at Play4Agile
Let me give ...

Agile Practices in a Nutshell

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 ...

On
4 July 2011
In
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

Awesome Coach of the Week: Ken Power

We honour Ken Power as Awesome Coach of the Week 20, 2011!

On
17 May 2011
In
Scrum & XP, agile, Awesome Coach of the Week
Tags
awesome, awesomecoachoftheweek, coach

Ken Power is a passionate agile coach from Ireland. We worked together in the ideation phase of the ALE network, played games at Play4Agile and met at the AgileCoachCamp Norway and two XP conferences.

Active Listening

Ken
This is Ken, with emphasis on the intensity of his eyes. Even in this picture where you see him intentionally diverting your attention from them his eyes still dominate the image.
I first met Ken in a world cafe about agile coaching at the XP2010 conference in Trondheim, Norway, and he impressed me with his listening skills. I hadn't heard of Active Listening ...

Awesome Coach of the Week: Paolo “Nusco” Perrotta

We honour Paolo “Nusco” Perrotta as Awesome Coach of the Week 16, 2011!

On
20 April 2011
In
Scrum & XP, agile, Awesome Coach of the Week
Tags
awesome, awesomecoachoftheweek, coach

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.

Nusco

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 ...

Awesome Coach of the Week: Richard Lawrence

We’ve known Richard Lawrence for years and worked with him on numerous occasions, mainly on one of the largest agile transition projects in Europe. Through this work, we came to value him as an Awesome Coach and chose to appreciate his contributions to the Agile Coaching community by honoring him with our first ever Awesome Coach of the Week award.

On
15 April 2011
In
Scrum & XP, agile, Awesome Coach of the Week
Tags
awesome, awesomecoachoftheweek, coach

We’ve known Richard for years and worked with him on numerous occasions, mainly on one of the largest agile transition projects in Europe. Through this work, we came to value him as an Awesome Coach and chose to appreciate his contributions to the Agile Coaching community by honoring him with our first ever Awesome Coach of the Week award.

Richard

ATDD

Richard’s most obvious contribution to the Agile world has been to the methods and tools of ATDD. He contributed to Cucumber and is the creator of Cuke4Nuke.

An Agile Family

Richard and his wife use a lot of ...

Which Role does Testing Play in an Agile Development Organisation?

Last Thursday, I had a session on Agile Testing at the QualityConf in Munich. It was a first-time event, intended ...

On
2 April 2011
In
Scrum, Scrum & XP, agile
Tags
agile, quality, scrum, tester, testing

Last Thursday, I had a session on Agile Testing at the QualityConf in Munich. It was a first-time event, intended for intensive exchange of the HP QualityCenter user community. My talk was a bit off-topic, as I was not talking about software tools, but about organisational change.

Not knowing what level of experience with Agile to expect from that audience was a bit of a challenge for my talk preparation. I chose to create a presentation with a strong focus on two topics: Why is Agile a good solution for 21st century software projects? How does “Agile Build Quality In ...

Scrum Fairy Tale

Scrum Fairy Tale The dwarves were working quite happily before snow white arrived. They had their mountain, the cave, their cosy little home... And each of them worked according to his role. They did not perceive any problem. One day, coming back home, they found a guest in their house. Snow White had arrived—I guess you know that part of the tale—and had started to initiate some changes.

On
31 March 2011
In
Scrum, Training, Scrum & XP
Tags
scrum, training, transition

Snow white and the dwarves

The dwarves were working quite happily before snow white arrived. They had their mountain, the cave, their cosy little home... And each of them worked according to his role. They did not perceive any problem. One day, coming back home, they found a guest in their house. Snow White had arrived—I guess you know that part of the tale—and had started to initiate some changes. First, there were struggles. Snow White challenged the status quo. Some dwarves did not like that. But Snow White was insisting, treating them as impediments. Things changed. Through ...

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