Blog: Agile & Business

Getting higher velocity! Take 2

September 28, 2011

I posted yesterday these listed below would lead, or at least could lead, to higher velocity (higher productivity) in your new product development teams: * Better retrospective meetings * Better impediment lists * Better business cases to management * More effective action (get approval and implement one ‘fix’ until you get results) * Better use […]

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Getting higher velocity!

September 27, 2011

Higher velocity per se is not the end-all and be-all.  But it sure does help. Having trouble getting to hyper-productivity? Try these things.  Together. * Better retrospective meetings * Better impediment lists * Better business cases to management * More effective action (get approval and implement one ‘fix’ until you get results) * Better use […]

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How does QA fit in?

September 27, 2011

Question from Liz:  The team and I are starting agile and we can’t get much info on where QA fits into Agile. Answer: First, I want to reiterate Jeff Sutherland’s concern (mentioned in this blog post), that the biggest problem is too many teams are not getting to working product (working software) within a Sprint […]

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Release Planning: Business Value Points

September 27, 2011

One difference between what I recommend for Release Planning and what others recommend is Business Value Points (BVPs). What do I mean? First, is it useful to distinguish the Business Value (BV) of items in the Product Backlog?  Yes, of course. Why?  Many ways to explain.  One: Pareto says you can re-apply the Pareto rule […]

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Latest Reading List – Books

September 27, 2011

We have a list of recommended books at LeanAgileTraining.com, here. In addition, we can recommend the following: A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising. Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) […]

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You’ve got to find what you love (says Steve Jobs)

August 28, 2011

There was an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal on August 24th (2011) about Steve Jobs. It gives the text of his commencement address at Stanford in 2005.  A quote from his talk is: “You’ve got to find what you love.”  This is maybe the key line of one of the three stories he […]

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Joe’s Approach to Agile Release Planning

August 25, 2011

Agile Release Planning is technically not part of Scrum.  But I think almost all Teams need it. As a coach, here are my thoughts on what Agile Release Planning should comprise. For 5-7 months of work, this could be done in about 1 day (maybe into a second day).  With good enough quality to then […]

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Joe’s Unofficial Scrum Checklist

August 25, 2011

Henrik Kniberg did a Scrum Checklist a while ago. Occasionally students at courses ask me for a similar thing. One always wonders: what are the most important questions to ask? What are the most important things to consider? Nothing that is somewhat short can address all the issues one finds in the real world, with […]

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Release Planning with Business Stakeholders

August 21, 2011

I just posted in the Yahoo group Agile Business the following: The past 3 (business) days I worked with a team in Atlanta to do release planning with the Business Stakeholders.  The business stakeholders were external customers. I was extremely impressed with the results. I strongly recommend it. Situation: * 15 people (6 pigs, 3 […]

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Better Retrospectives

August 20, 2011

In Scrum (and in life), we have periodic retrospectives.  In Scrum, we have a time-boxed Retrospective meeting once each sprint. Why? The main reason is to be more productive without working any harder.  Put another way: mainly to remove impediments. I hear about far too many Retrospectives where we have a lot of fun bitching […]

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