Is your Scrum team struggling with questions about who owns quality? Is testing way behind development? Are team members claiming no time for retrospective because they’re focused on delivery? They might be victims of what some call Scrummerfall, or Mini Waterfall. Let’s use our fictional World’s Smallest Online Bookstore (WSOBS) Scrum team to explore what […]
Scrum Team
The Modern Guide to the Daily Scrum Meeting
Many people who attend Scrum training courses start with the impression that the Daily Scrum is the whole of Scrum. Others think the Daily Scrum centres on three questions (this was true a long time ago). This guide to the Daily Scrum meeting was created to address these misconceptions as well as answer common questions. […]
Is Your Scrum Team Good Enough?
If your Scrum Team has been together for years and you’ve been following the Agile principles and Scrum structure, you might be feeling quite confident. Scrum isn’t an inherently easy methodology to adapt, especially since it requires change beyond the personal behaviour level to see the biggest results. So if your team has gotten to […]
Forcing People Back to the Office
In December the Treasury Board of Canada ordered that, starting in mid-January, all employees would be expected to return to the office for two to three days a week. Among the stated goals were: Innovation, Creativity, Fairness, and Consistency. This all ties in well with the Agile Manifesto which includes the principle “The most efficient […]
Why are Group Decision-making Techniques Important?
Whether we’re facilitating Retrospectives, Sprint Planning, or a Strategy session, there are always decisions needed. How you approach those decisions should vary depending on the degree of cost and whether the decision is easily reversible or not. Given the speed at which Agile moves, we can’t afford a lot of time spent waiting for simple […]
Future Perspective for Change: Why Backcasting Helps Get You Where You Want to Be
When a product team starts work on a product, it’s important that they understand the vision. This is, as they say, a bit of a no-brainer since otherwise they might build something that completely misses the mark. In a modern Agile world, we’re expecting a mix of Product Management, Developers, ScrumMaster, the Customer and perhaps […]
Scrum by Example – Same Old Song in Sprint Retrospective
The World’s Smallest Online Bookstore team has just come out of their Sprint Review. For those who’re keeping score, the team committed to a Sprint Goal: Have basic reader review system in place so book buyers can see a variety of opinions about a book. Their plan included completing seven Product Backlog Items and fixing […]
Red-Yellow-Green Status Reports and Other Models – How They Should and Shouldn’t Be Used
Red-Yellow-Green status reports are a widely-used tool to help executives have a fast and simple understanding of the current state of a project through a visual model that makes it easy to spot patterns. Green means everything is good, yellow means there’s some risk, and red means the project is in serious trouble. Simple, right? […]