Monthly Archives: March 2009

Business Value Engineering – 3 questions

I want to slightly change my definition of Business Value Engineering (see earlier post). It is the values, principles and practices that we use help us continuously improve the Business Value we deliver. Some questions and answers: Q. “Business Value.” OK, always good. Why add the word “engineering”? A. Scrum says you must always improve […]

How honest should you be in Scrum?

First answer: Completely. If only the answer were that simple. Sorry, but Scrum and Agile provide no cookbook answer to this question. Some people use “honesty” to mean they get a right to be brutal to others (and also to ignore their own imperfections). More often, the de-facto thinking is, “Honesty means I won’t say […]

Identify your multiple! What?!

Let’s discuss the last post from the skeptic’s point of view. Simon (the implementer) 1: “OK, I don’t want to get fired, but what’s this ‘multiple’ got to do with it?” The multiple is the relationship between the cost of the team and the NPV (net present value) of the benefits the team delivers. As […]

ACTION: Go identify your multiple. Now.

Two posts ago, I buried a key idea in a lengthy list. Here’s the gist. When the managers come around trying to figure out who to “re-engineer,” would it be helpful to be able to say, “Guys, the firm invested in our team about $1 million last year and got about $3 million back in […]

Contradictions

I have been noticing the contradictions in Agile and Scrum lately. Jeff Sutherland recently did a post about persuasion. The latest post might be summarized as: “To persuade you must be confident and humble.” I guess no contradictions there, but he does talk about contradictions elsewhere. And this quote has been bouncing inside my head […]