Category Archives: Agile principles

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Adapting Better

In 2001, “Responding to Change over Following a Plan” seemed like a pretty aggressive step. (That is the last of the four Agile Manifesto lines.) Today, from a customer’s viewpoint, it is not enough. Customers want a better adaptation to change, and not just attitude or relatively obvious things like more or faster releases. They want […]

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Responding to Change

The line from the Agile Manifesto is: “Responding to Change over Following a Plan.” But let’s take this further in two main ways. 1) Change can be good. To me, in Waterfall, we always thought of change as bad. It was mainly bad because it forced us (eventually) to change the plan which was a lot of […]

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Get Everyone Involved

OK, it sounds good, get everyone involved. But what does it mean? And why do we suggest it? It means many things. Here are some: Everyone gets to contribute. Eleven heads are better than one. Get everyone on the same page at the same time. Visibility. Everyone can see it at the same time. We can […]

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Speedy

General George Patton said: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Part of this is an acceptance that all plans are imperfect and are based on incomplete information, including incomplete information about the future. We do the best we can to plan in a quick time-box, and […]

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Openness

One of the key ideas behind planning is Openness. What does that mean? Many things. Let’s list a few. Everyone can see it… the current state of our planning. Everyone can voice an opinion… within a reasonable time-box. “It’s too long, it’s too short, too big, too small, too cheap, too expensive…” as examples. And […]

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Planning, Not the Plan

There are people in Agile that call themselves the “no-estimates” group. They hate “planning” that used to crush people. And, at least, this is how planning is perceived sometimes. But they overreact. Yes, they are right that planning should never be used to put people under a lot of pressure—certainly not to crush people—but life always includes […]

Let’s consider Aggressive Scrum

Can we imagine a world where things are notably better for the team and its customers? To me, aggressive Scrum would be a key part of that world. Here are some of the characteristics of aggressive Scrum: the team is playing Scrum like they mean it, together you have a great team who has been […]

Why dwell on the basics of Scrum?

Sometimes I am asked, why do you dwell on the basics of Scrum in your CSM class. A couple of obvious answers, although not the most important: there are beginners in most classes Scrum Alliance expects me to cover the basics while the students read the Scrum Guide (often) before the class, they do not […]

The key purpose of Agile Release Planning

The following email lacks some context, but I wanted to post it anyway.  This is what I usually say (enact) at the end of the Agile Release Planning segment or workshop.  Hope it helps you.  This was said in a recent email to a class, as you’ll see. *** Hi all, There was something important […]

Change the World – Make your bed

A friend of mine, who is definitely not a military guy, sent me this video.   “If you want to change the world, make your bed.”   That’s the title that goes with the video and with Admiral McRaven’s commencement address in 2014 at the University of Texas. If you have lived a while, you can […]