What Gravity, Percocet, and a Girlfriend Taught me about Scrum
A couple weeks ago, I got a teary phone call from my girlfriend who had just been attacked by a gaggle of jogging girls while she was biking back from her lab at Stanford. To be fair, these girls...
View ArticleFingers, Keyboards, and Organizational Transformations
Perhaps you’ve been at your job for a while, recently took your SCM course, and are trying to figure out how to help your organization become more agile. Or perhaps you’re new to your company, but not...
View ArticleGo Fish! Agile Antipatterns…
The other day I was reading Ken Schwaber’s blog post on how Scrum does not “fail”. He compared doing Scrum to playing chess: Scrum is like chess. You either play it as its rules state, or you don’t....
View ArticleAgile Manifesto Poster
After looking far and wide for posters of the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles (a la http://agilemanifesto.org of course) to hang in my office, I was quite frustrated to find there were none I...
View ArticleBuild your own Scrum
Update Since this original blog post, Build Your Own Scrum has grown substantially. It’s been used by Scrum Trainers to teach Scrum from the back of the room around the world at companies like Intel...
View ArticleRetrospective Cookies
UPDATE 8/13: I’ve got a brand new batch of cookies ready just in time for Agile 2012! This run includes additional questions from my new colleagues at Collabnet: Angela Druckman, Jimi Fosdick,...
View ArticleUpdate The Card Wall – The App
Every new Scrum team I’ve worked with has had the same problem: Remembering to update their task board. Back in my command-and-control days, I’d pester my team to update the wall. Since I’ve sworn off...
View Article“Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say”
Here are some of the worst things a Scrum Master can say or do, compressed into three painfully funny minutes!
View ArticleThe Scrum Kickoff Planner
I’ve helped kickoff a lot of Scrum teams. Even with the number of teams I’ve helped get started, I still struggle to remember all the subjects a team can benefit from discussing when they first form....
View ArticleMic Check! 1…2…3…
Introducing the Agile Answers Podcast! Every week I’ll answer a question submitted by a listener, and will give you no-nonsense real-world tips, tricks, and techniques to help you improve your agile...
View ArticleHow do I energize a demotivated Scrum team?
Angela recently joined an existing team as their new ScrumMaster. Unfortunately the team is a bit shell-shocked from their old ScrumMaster’s command-and-control ways. I’ll offer up several approaches...
View ArticleWhen should the business stakeholders get help from the dev team to get items...
When’s the right time to get the development team and business stakeholders together to discuss requirements? Marcy is struggling with a few challenges around this topic, so my friend Luke Walter, CST...
View ArticleHow do you make sure your team has time to make the improvements they...
Does your team identify process improvements in your Retrospective then find it hard to make time during the next sprint to actually implement the improvements? You’re not alone. In this episode I’ll...
View ArticleOur teams keep changing. How do I set guidelines that keep teams together?
illConstantly moving people from team to team hurts the teams in question, the individuals being moved around, and the organizations they serve. Amanda asks what guidelines can be put in place to help...
View ArticleHow do you help PMs and Managers not fall back into their waterfall ways?
Switching from waterfall to an agile approach can be difficult. Managers, PMs, and others often cling to their old command-and-control ways in order to feel comfortable and, well, “in control”. Raj...
View ArticleHow do I escaped the dreaded ‘Scrummerfall’ trap?
Duncan’s team has switched from waterfall to an iterative approach. Their iterations are 2 weeks in length, but it seems the team is just doing mini-waterfalls in the two-week timebox. I’ll share the 3...
View ArticleWill this hurt my Daily Scrum? And how do we deal with “non-dev” work?
Jamie has two questions: the first is about the Daily Scrum, the second is about how to account for work a team needs to do that doesn’t directly affect the product they’re building. I’ll answer both...
View ArticleWhat are some creative & effective ways to make Retrospectives more engaging?
Anthony is looking for ways to make the Scrum meetings more engaging and useful. In this episode I’ll talk about how to get your team engaged in Retrospectives by making them FUN! If your team feels...
View ArticleHow do we improve our giant, multi-team Sprint Review session (or Sprint...
Dae-Ho’s organization has multiple Scrum teams, and one giant all-day Sprint Review. People come and go throughout the day, and stakeholders are not always present. He wonders if there’s a better way...
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