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This Scrumism didn’t originate with me, but I’ve found myself using it on pretty much on every agile engagement I do. One of my favorite Scrum Masters was a gentleman named Jared. Jared was one of those folks that every team hopes to get. He wasn’t just a talented Scrum Master …
When a new Scrum team takes their first swipe at estimating the tasks for a sprint, there is a lot of guessing that necessarily has to take place. They are still getting used to the very idea of “done, done, done” and so the engineers have to just take their …
The second of the four points in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development is that we value “Working software over comprehensive documentation”. This is not to say that you don’t need documentation, but it does bring me to my Scrumism in this blog – working software is your best offense. A …
One thing Scrumism teams get used to when I’m working with them is “current course and speed.” I especially take care to explain this concept if I’m working with management, or those who aren’t very familiar with things like backlogs and velocity. When presenting a roadmap, you basically lay out what …
The Scrumism for this post is one that I’m sure some of the Scrum teams I’ve worked with had gotten tired of hearing me say. When a Product Owner (PO) is working on a product backlog, he or she pays attention to first getting things identified (at least at an epic level), …
The Agile Manifesto says we value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, which is where the idea of “self-directing teams” gets its genesis. When an organization is feeling its way in bringing in agile approaches, there can be some stumbling along the way as they shift from telling developers …
So one of the cool things about Scrum is that it is fun to do. If you are an engineer, you got into the field because you like to build shiny things and see them work. Scrum lets you concentrate on a small increment, get it done and working, and …
We sometimes get caught up in the mechanics of delivering software and forget to give the requirements the attention they need. In the agile / Scrum world, the requirements are housed in the Product Backlog (which I’ll just call the “backlog” in this article). There is a pattern I’ve seen …
One of our senior consultants at Seilevel once gave me some sage advice. I had asked him what the secret was to being a great consultant, and without hesitation he said “correctly predicting the future”. We help our customers in all sorts of ways, but helping them chart a course …
It’s fun to ask a company or a team if they are using agile development methodologies. You might get a “no”, but you rarely get a “yes” that isn’t followed up with a “but…”. The “but” can be simple little things like the team doesn’t self-organize, or be something a …
