by Bob Hartman on August 23, 2010
Have you ever had the feeling someone REALLY didn’t get it? I had that feeling recently when reading this article about the supposed weaknesses of agile. Some of the 10 points make a bit of sense, but what seems to be missing is what happens in a non-agile scenario with the same limitations? I decided to write this blog entry to show what I think would occur and to do a bit of a bake-off between agile and non-agile teams for each point raised by the writer of the article. So, without further ado – drum roll please – welcome to… Your Agile Isn’t My Agile. [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on July 27, 2010
Do you ever get so frustrated you feel like pulling your hair out? I do (although that is NOT a picture of me to the left!). If you look at my pictures you will see that it would be difficult for me to pull my hair out because a) there isn’t a lot of it, and b) what little there is I have cut very short. But, enough about me, back to the issue/craziness at hand.
I last updated my blog on June 14 and here it is July 27. That is way too long between updates, so let me start by apologizing to all of you who look forward to reading entries when I post them. Fortunately, during the time when I haven’t been updating the blog I recognized a problem which I often see on agile teams – CRAZINESS! Yes, sometimes things get a little crazy, or in my case recently, a LOT crazy! [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on June 14, 2010
Is success or failure really a choice? I don’t think it is at all. Pretty much no one chooses to fail. Unfortunately, we can’t just choose to be successful either. What we CAN choose is to try to make a success out of a failure! The old saying “Make lemonade out of lemons” really is a good way of looking at things, especially for agile teams.
Agile teams will have times when they “fail.” I know a lot of people dislike using the words “fail” and “failure” when talking about team results. I’m actually pretty tired of that argument because I don’t think it helps anyone. I’d rather call a “poor result” a “failure” and acknowledge we can and will strive to do better next time. As I say during workshops I facilitate, “I am blunt and reality based. Sometimes that means I will say things which you won’t like to hear.” I don’t call teams “failures” or anything like that. That would be namecalling and that is never appropriate. However, calling results a failure is correct and leaves no room for interpretation. I find being blunt in those situations to be more useful because teams then must face the reality and not try to sugar coat it as “not being all that bad…” [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on May 18, 2010
Have you ever been so focused on something that the rest of the world seemed to disappear for a while? This can be great under certain circumstances, but in other cases it can be extremely harmful. When someone focuses on a target and doesn’t see anything but the target we call it “target fixation.” This can have dire negative effects! For example, a fighter pilot can become so fixated on a target that they forget to avoid the target and run right into it. The same can happen as we go through a curve in a moving vehicle.
Unfortunately, a variation of this can also occur to agile teams! When it starts happening to agile teams it can be very difficult to detect and correct because everyone thinks they are doing the right thing. It isn’t until much later when most teams finally determine this was the problem. [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on May 17, 2010
This is a companion post to last year’s “I’m a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) – so what?” post. In that post I spoke about the advantage of using Certified Scrum Coaches over non-certified coaches for agile or Scrum training. I also wrote a post called “Agile Ponderings: Certification – useful or not?” where I explored what were then the current certifications available from the Scrum Alliance. In that one I wrote that I was probably going to pursue becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) but I had some misgivings about it because of the cost and also the way the application process worked. Apparently other people had problems with the process as well, AND the Scrum Alliance listened to the complaints. A beta process was created and I was asked to be one of the first five applicants to use the new process. I’m writing this blog entry to detail my experiences with the new process, but also to make people aware of how using a Certified Scrum Trainer could help their organization achieve better results. [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on May 5, 2010
Is the bug to the left a large bug or a small bug? It looks HUGE to me! Well, in reality it is probably between .5 and .75 inches long. Not really a very big bug at all. Why do we care? Because trying to size the fixing of software “bugs” is at least as hard as figuring out how big this bug is!
When I teach an Agile or Scrum course someone will almost always ask a question like “How do you handle bug fixes in iterations or sprints?” When I ask “How do you want to handle them?” we get into a pretty interesting discussion. Most people say something similar to “We should prioritize them with the user stories, size them like we do user stories and then see what fits into each iteration.” I usually smile and ask any developers if they know ahead of time how long it will take to fix a defect. They ALWAYS say “Sometimes.” And THAT is the problem! [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on May 3, 2010
What’s wrong with the user story on the card? It seems to have everything we need: a) short title, b) a size (in this case 2), and c) a well-written story using the standard “As a … I want … so that …” format. So what’s wrong? Nothing! Well, almost nothing. The user story card is a great STARTING POINT, but it is not sufficient by itself.
In coaching Agile and Scrum teams I see many of them starting out with the assumption that the user story card contains all the information they need in order to create a high quality piece of software. Forgive me for being harsh, but how stupid is that? Assuming a single sentence can fully describe something which might take a few days to analyze, design, code and test seems pretty ambitious. No, let me take that back. It’s more than pretty ambitious, it is just not possible. So I ask again, what’s wrong with this story card? [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on April 7, 2010
Have you ever been in a class or training session which is so boring you felt like you might fall asleep? Or maybe you are one of the people that DID fall asleep! I know I’ve been there many times. When I started facilitating sessions on agile and Scrum I knew I couldn’t do it if the sessions would put people to sleep. I knew I had to have dynamic sessions that kept people involved and challenged them to exceed their own expectations. I put together the best sessions I knew how and I was quite successful with it (see the bottom of the sidebar at www.agileforall.com for course results and quotes from evaluation forms). Attendees were very happy with the results, but I knew I could do better. Much better. I knew I could talk less and have the attendees do even more. I knew I could better help the attendees if I could just figure out how to get information across in a different way.
Then something happened which changed my life and will help me change many lives going forward. [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on March 15, 2010
you would have had an absolutely indescribably fantastic time! And that’s just for starters. To be honest, the phrase “that was so much fun it must have been a sin” comes to mind. I had fun every minute I was there. Here’s a short VERY LONG recap of what I can recall now (a week after I arrived in Orlando):
Saturday, very late at night I was on a shuttle from Orlando International Airport to the Gaylord Palms Resort and Conference Center. I was blown away when I saw the Gaylord Palms. It was a sight to behold. On the Mears shuttle were about 10 people and I didn’t know any of them. I was tired and just looking forward to getting to bed. While waiting for my luggage to be taken off the shuttle someone in the group said “You’re Bob, right?” Freaky, right? Well, I was at the hotel hosting the Scrum Gathering, but I was not expecting someone on my airport shuttle to know me! Turns out it was Bent Myllerup and his wife Kirsten from Denmark. He recognized me from various pictures. By the way, Bent is a fellow Certified Scrum Coach. I got to hear about how they had to fly through Detroit to get to Orlando and they were afraid the luggage was lost, but then it caught up with them. I felt tired, but they looked pretty wiped out after a REALLY long day of flying. Little did I know how many more surprises were in store for me! [click to continue…]
by Bob Hartman on March 14, 2010
I’m making my Orlando Scrum Gathering presentation “Doing Scrum Isn’t the Same as LIVING Scrum” available as a PDF. You don’t have to fill out a form to get it, although if you sign up for my mailing list and/or subscribe to the blog I won’t complain! Just click the link below to download.
Doing Scrum Isn’t the Same as LIVING Scrum PDF
Until next time I’ll be Making Agile a Reality® for others by working on my next set of presentations!
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