In 201x, the global financial markets collapsed. Reason: mortgages were given to people who couldn’t afford them. This debt was then repackaged and sold to banks and other institutions as good debt. (“The Big Short” by Michael Lewis is an excellent indictment of this time). However, the bigger question remained. Why didn’t the financial regulator […]
Notes from a Tool User
“Because Our Competitors Are” is No Reason to Become an Agile Organization
Companies are starting to fall into a trap, and it goes something like this, “Our partners/competitors/… are Agile, so we need to be Agile.” Becoming Agile without a valid reason will harm your organization. I can’t state that any simpler. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, rival manufacturers often visited Toyota plants, and Toyota was delighted […]
Taking Organizational Improvement Seriously – Case Study
(Presented as an accompanying case study to Part 4 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series.) In the previous post, we discussed how it’s not enough to practice Scrum at the Team level and expect that it will solve all problems. Senior Management has to get involved for real Agile change to happen and […]
Taking Organizational Improvement with Scrum Seriously
(Presented as Part 4 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series, and accompanied by this worked example of Organizational Improvement in WorldsSmallestOnlineBookstore.) If Agile change initiatives don’t produce at least the doubling in productivity that is possible, it’s often because Scrum is used as a wrapper around the current state of work, but the organization […]
Scrum Without Removing Impediments Isn’t Scrum
Mechanical Scrum Versus True Scrum – What’s the Difference? Recently I was talking to a friend about their company’s implementation of Scrum. They don’t see the point. Before Scrum was implemented, they often had to wait an hour or more to access a test machine. After several years of using Scrum, it’s still a problem. […]
Vision to User Stories – What is the Best Flow?
In a recent Product Owner Course I was asked to provide a picture of the flow from Vision to User Stories, with all the steps in between. I think the attendee was hoping for something like: There are a couple of challenges. Scrum, being a framework, doesn’t tell the Product Owner or the Dev Team […]
Portfolio Management – Idle Teams
(Continued from Portfolio Management Part 1 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series.) Imagine that the Portfolio Management group is giving the individual Product Owners a budgetary envelope of an approximate size. As Product Owners, we expect to make small bets on individual User Stories that will deliver value to the customer. The Portfolio Management group […]
Portfolio Management
(Presented as Part 3 in the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series.) As mentioned in the introduction to the Scrum Alone is Not Enough series, Scrum is simply the framework and, to work best, other tools and patterns need to be incorporated to build the most effective systems. Portfolio Management is one of those things […]