Category Archives: Agile principles

The Daily Scrum – a question

Srinivas sent me the following note: QUESTION: Thanks to Joe and all of the attendees — I have learned a lot from all of you. I have a simple question — in the Daily Scrum meeting — if I understood it correctly, team members are expected to answer the three questions to the team — […]

Freedom

I have written about freedom before, but, as Rousseau said, man is born free and everywhere is in chains. It is a topic that bears repeated discussion. In business and in life, too many people want to think that they own other people. Other ‘resources’ or whatever they may call these people. These owners might […]

On Sustainable Pace

I was just at the Agile Tour at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. It was a very good event. (Kudos to Catherine Louis and the other organizers!) Laurie Williams, who is a great person and a great Agile researcher, has done some work recently. I should use her words for it but don’t have […]

King of Anything

Sara Bareilles, whose music I have enjoyed, has a new song: King of Anything. I think you will like it. You might be asking: Why is he talking about this song here? And the answer: In work, we must recognize the importance of freedom and self-organization. For their own sake (these are human rights, after […]

Courage

I have suggested in other posts that a tremendous amount of improvement can be made in five areas: ScrumMaster leading the removal of impediments Product owner executing the 85 percent to 33 percent rule (like the 80 to 20 rule) Team having more fun! Team reducing technical debt all of the time Continuously better business […]

Suggestions for a better Daily Scrum

It is my view that the main problem with doing Scrum is that we don’t “feel the music” while we do the dance. That is to say: we don’t understand the values and principles underlying the practices we are doing. In general, this is true of all of us. Saying, “I get Scrum better than […]

If you wait for perfection….

If you wait for perfection, you might wait too long. There are some similar quotes, but so far as I know, this quote is mine. As the father, I kind of like it. But most parents love their own children. (If I am not the father, tell me now.) This applies to all of life. […]

Do Scrum and Kool-Aid go together?

Occasionally I hear the complaint, “Oh, you [scrum, agile, lean, x] guys have drunk the Kool-Aid. You don’t care how reality intrudes, you’re just going to propose your [x] solutions.” What does this person mean? He or she might mean, “Completely on faith, without any support of reason and facts, you are a strong advocate […]

Spontaneous Order

I will not remember this well (knowledge decay), but there is a great quote from Fujio Cho (now Chairman of Toyota) at the beginning of Liker’s The Toyota Way. Something like: “There are many things you do not understand, and therefore we ask, ‘Why don’t you just go ahead and take action? Try to do […]

Thinking for Yourself

Here is a great blog post by Kenji Hiranabe about why thinking for yourself in your specific context is important in Lean. In the picture to the right is Mr. Satoshi Kuroiwa, the chairman of the Association for Support for Economic Sustainable Development in Japan.