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Agile antipattern: Burndown “wall”

December 14, 2009

Does your team have an iteration burndown chart (giving credit only for completed stories) look like the one to the left? If so there are a couple of possible explanations.  Last week I blogged about how this could be a symptom of working on user stories that are too large.  However, there is another possible explanation, and it [...]

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New to agile? Learn how to split stories

December 10, 2009

In my last blog Agile antipattern: Taking on large stories I said I would give you some tips on how to split stories.  First though, it is important to understand WHY splitting a story well can be helpful.  It is about much more than just making smaller stories.  In fact, making smaller stories may be the least [...]

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Agile antipattern: Taking on large stories

December 9, 2009

Earlier this week I posted a blog entry “Agile antipattern: Burndown charts that hide the truth” which dealt with one way a burndown chart could hide reality.  This blog entry shows another way it is possible for a burndown chart to be misleading.  The burndown chart to the left is actually pretty common, especially for [...]

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Agile question of the month contest for December 2009

December 8, 2009

Want to win an Amazon gift certificate?  This month I am starting a new feature in the blog.  The feature is called “Agile question of the month.”  The way it works is very simple.  I’m going to put forth a scenario based at least in part on a real situation I have come across when [...]

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Agile antipattern: Burndown charts that hide the truth

December 7, 2009

See that burndown chart over there to the left?  It looks beautiful doesn’t it?  It is an actual burndown chart with no made up data.  It looks like this team is kicking butt and having a great sprint.  Unfortunately, the chart lies!  It turns out this team is actually in difficulty and in fact are unlikely [...]

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Weekly PM Insights Newsletter

December 3, 2009

Recently I’ve been asked to write an occasional article for the Weekly PM Insights newsletter.  This newsletter is published every Sunday night and so far has had some excellent articles.  There are some very good names in the world of Project Management writing articles, and Ray Posch (the editor) was open-minded enough to ask me to [...]

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New to agile? Remember the power of automation

December 1, 2009

As this blog entry is published I am teaching an agile/scrum course to a client in Flanders, New Jersey.  You might want to ask “Bob, how can you do that?  Isn’t the client upset when you blogwhile they are paying for your time?”  Certainly they would be upset and they would be well within their [...]

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New to agile? Give thanks!

November 24, 2009

Here in the United States we will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, November 26.  If you are currently on an agile team you may want to consider giving thanks a bit earlier!  My thank you list would definitely include: 1. Thanks for the organization allowing us to be successful with an agile development [...]

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Agile antipattern: Doing Agile!

November 18, 2009

I spent the past week in Orlando, Florida  at the Agile Development Practices conference and I heard a number of people say “We do agile at our company.”  When pressed further it suddenly became “We do agile at our company except we don’t do …”  To me that sums up the problem of DOING agile [...]

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New to agile? Remember to respect people

November 17, 2009

One of the Lean Principles is “Respect People.”  I think it may be the most important lean principle.  When I teach a course and get to this principle I tell people I have yet to see any organization which does this really well.  They are all shocked to hear this so I go on to [...]

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Free Event! Agile Adoption: The Real Story

October 7, 2009

On October 20, the Agile Cooperative will be hosting a free one-day seminar designed to give attendees a lot of information about what is really required to be successful with an agile adoption.  If you are in the Denver area and your organization is giving any consideration to adopting agile you must attend this seminar!  [...]

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New to agile? Keep it very simple

October 6, 2009

When dealing with an agile implementation, particularly in the case of a new agile team, we often make things too complex and difficult.  We tend to keep putting band-aids on the process until we have something that is overly burdensome and no longer useful.  I’ve now seen enough of this to know there needs to [...]

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New to agile? What does the ScrumMaster do anyway?

September 23, 2009

I often have people ask me what a ScrumMaster does.  Interestingly, today it came up on a mailing list I read on a regular basis.  So, naturally that means it is time for a blog entry to talk about it! I am a big believer in simplifying things, so let’s start with an overly simplistic [...]

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Agile antipattern: Working overtime

September 22, 2009

Ever feel like the guy over there to the left?  Yeah, me too.  Sorry to offend some people with my language, but working overtime really sucks.  I always felt it meant someone else’s bad planning meant I had to have a lousy day, night, weekend (maybe all 3 at once!).  For agile teams, working overtime [...]

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I’m a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) – so what?

September 15, 2009

I’ve asked myself that question more than once in the 5 or so months since I became a CSC.  I never doubted my decision to go through the process and I was thrilled to have been accepted into a very small fraternity (still only 21 in the world), but I couldn’t figure out how to [...]

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New to agile? Don’t make it too hard!

September 14, 2009

OK, so this isn’t my normal type of blog entry.  I don’t usually plug my speaking enagements like this, but then I thought – why not?  So, for anyone local to the Denver area, I’ll be speaking to the Agile Denver group on September 28.  Below is the abstract for my talk.  I’ll post another blog [...]

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Agile2009 thoughts so far

August 26, 2009

So far I am having a great time at the Agile2009 conference in Chicago.  There are some amazing speakers at this event.  With approximately 1350 attendees this is clearly a big deal!  Some odd scheduling issues (Jeff Sutherland in a small room???), some bad scheduling luck (all 3 Agile Cooperative members speaking at the same [...]

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Wow, this is a Best of the Web Top 100 blog!

August 12, 2009

I just found out that this blog is now listed as a Top 100 blog by The Daily Reviewer!  I am truly flattered to be in such great company.  If you want to look at other agile blogs, or blogs on other subjects check them out by clicking on the ribbon image to the left. [...]

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New to agile? Work at a sustainable pace

July 24, 2009

Question:  Which is better: a) Working nights and weekends to meet iteration commitments, or b) Admitting the commitment was too much and working normal hours regardless of the commitment?

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Agile pondering: Is it agile to have a “single wringable neck?”

July 23, 2009

In Scrum one of the named roles is that of Product Owner.  Some people have taken to referring to this position as the “single wringable neck” on a Scrum team.  This is because the Product Owner is ultimately responsible for the prioritized product backlog which the team uses as their to-do list to build the [...]

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