Scrum

Agile is a vast umbrella that encompasses various frameworks including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Extreme Programming (XP), each with its own unique qualities and benefits. These approaches all align with the values and principles of Agile but provide specific processes and tactics to guide teams to the Agile mindset.

Are you good at technical interviewing? If not, you are not alone. Due to the long and incomplete feedback loop for interviewers, many people in the industry are following bad practices without realizing it. However, there is a way to break this cycle and improve your skills.

What’s the easiest way to screw up a Scrum or agile adoption at a company? Simple. Tell people “we’re agile”, give them a one-hour overview of how things work, and then let them loose. This post discussed my first agile project, and the five steps I’ve implemented at multiple companies to ensure a successful Scrum transformation.

I recently wrote about 4 secrets to a successfully daily scrum, which covered the basics for ensuring a productive daily scrum meeting. However, what do you do if your team is distributed?

We’ve all heard the common myth, Agile means no documentation. While other agile fallacies exist, this is a big one, and it could not be farther from the truth. Good agile teams are disciplined about their documentation but are also deliberate about how much they do and when.

Sprint Planning does not need to be challenging. It is often fun and a time for the entire Scrum team to build camaraderie by working together to answer the question of “What can we commit to?” Here I provide examples and strategies for keeping Sprint Planning focused and effective, and detail potential solutions to common problems teams encounter when planning a Sprint.

How to integrate rework into your everyday life while building software and why it’s key to success.

You’ve just finished a great story-writing workshop with your stakeholders. You’re excited about the new product and are anxious to get started. Until, that is, you get back to your office and look at the mountain of stories that you’ve somehow got to estimate and prioritize. All your excitement disappears as you face the hard truth: You have no idea where to start.

We hear quite a bit that Scrum teams \“need\” full time Scrum Masters, but rarely do we see teams that get them. Why? Several reasons, but the biggest one is usually money. Why should a company pay for someone to keep a team healthy?

There is no one-size-fits-all, magic bullet for determining a sprint length that works well for every team. Originally, Scrum called for one-month sprints, but nowadays many teams have been successful with two-week or even one-week sprints.

We put a lot of emphasis on being Renaissance workers, able to step comfortably from one job role to the next. But, as I describe here, not all roles play nicely with each other, and trying to combine them may lead to disaster.

People often ask why they should work on a Scrum team if their companies base rewards on individual efforts. This raises the question, how does Scrum help the individual?

I am always amazed when I ask people what they think the job of a manager is. I get answers like “to tell people what to do” to “stay out of the way” to “do my performance review” to “lead”. The last one is always of interest to me. Do companies hire managers or do they hire leaders?

Colleague Jean Tabaka posted a question recently that asked “How we can motivate these people as much as possible before having them leave the newly anointed agile organization?” The context around this question is that there are people who are viewed as hero’s in organizations. These individuals “are very specialized individuals with knowledge outside just the software development realm (physics, mathematics, fluids mechanics…) These individuals are used to being highly prized for their very specific subject expertise. They have a sense of significance hooked onto their unique role.”

Mixing Scrum and Waterfall will provide you an interesting mix… This is one of my older MSDN posts from August, 2006. Enjoy. :)

As parents, we can all relate to the challenge of keeping kids motivated and on track. To make it easier, why not use agile techniques right in your own home? This tried-and-true blog post from 2006 shows you how - trust us, its timeless advice has been put into practice with a variety of families since then!