I’m frequently asked if a Tester, Business Analyst, User Experience (UX) person, Database Analyst, or Security Expert is part of the Scrum team? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: many people misunderstand the Scrum Guide. Scrum Development Team Membership The Scrum Guide has a short section called “The Development Team” which says: The Development Team consists […]
Scrum
Beyond Scrum Blog Series
We’ve had requests for a single page that lists all the ongoing Beyond Scrum blog posts in one handy spot, and we’re happy to oblige! The below list will be updated as new posts are added. Scrum Alone is Not Enough Simplicity Scrum Development Team – Who’s In It? What is the Recommended Scrum Team […]
Agile Change or Adoption: Define Small Organizational Changes
(Continued from Agile Change or Adoption Always Starts with Why : 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) Seeing an organizational change map with seven to eight proposed major changes can feel daunting and discouraging. It’s even worse when we realize that list will keep growing as new organizational problems are discovered. By taking on only one or two changes at a […]
Reinventing Existing Products – Big Bite vs Small Nibble Rewrites
Twice now in my career I’ve done a massive rewrite to replace an existing product. In both cases, it didn’t end well. Each time, the new product was competing with an existing product that was making the company money. So, of course, the existing product got enhancements on a rickety structure, and on the new […]
$50 Million Phoenix Fix – Avoiding Disaster With Scrum
As most Canadians can tell you, the rollout of the Canadian Government’s Phoenix payroll modernization system has gone disastrously badly. At one stage, there were over 80,000 civil servants who had payment problems, with some even losing their houses over the mess. I’ve seen everything from the contractor (IBM) to a lack of training being […]
Forecasting, Metrics and the Lies that a Single Number Tell Us
This post has now been replaced by the updated and expanded Red-Yellow-Green Status Reports and Other Models – How They Should and Shouldn’t Be Used post. Please update all bookmarks and links accordingly. We’ve previously seen that our mental models often make false assumptions due to cognitive bias. Giving a Single number in a report has […]
Agile Change or Adoption: Turn Vision into Strategy
(Continued from Agile Change or Adoption Always Starts with Why : 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) We’re already familiar with how Story Maps are an excellent way to help development teams visualize the work involved in building a large product. They act as stepping-stones between the initial vision and the resulting deliverable user stories. But Story Maps can serve a similar purpose […]
Agile Change or Adoption: Create a Vision
(Continued from Agile Change or Adoption Always Starts with Why: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) Most organizational change effort starts with a vision. But problems arise if the vision was created by a few executives who went off-site, as that can result in a vision that doesn’t address the problems felt by the doers at […]