Skiing as an agile vs waterfall metaphor
Posted by Erwin van der Koogh in the wee hours: January 31st, 2010
I was asked by one of my clients to give a short introduction into Agile. As we did not have an appropriate presentation for this kind of audience and knowledge level I decided to create a new presentation. And while I was thinking of a good metaphor to compare traditional waterfall against agile methodologies the pictures of my recent snowboarding trip caught my eye and it hit me; Skiing (or snowboarding) is a very good metaphor to compare both methodologies.
It has the same characteristics as a project in that once you get started it just keeps on going; There are other projects (or skiers) in your way, environments change and conditions might not be what you expected them to be.
Let's see how it works out:
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Tips for ScrumMasters: How to act on retrospective outcomes
Posted by Marco Mulder in the late evening: November 25th, 2009
In my previous blog, I talked about when to estimate user stories so that a Product Owner can do release planning based on velocity and relative estimates. This time, I will discuss another topic that I see many Scrum teams struggle with: how to implement improvements based on what is discussed in retrospectives.
Many Scrum teams have a hard time to continuously improve themselves. In retrospectives, problems and possible improvements are discussed. Then nothing happens. In later retrospectives, the same problems are discussed without noticeable changes. Retrospectives like this are a waste of time. Even worse, missing out on the opportunity to continuously improve is a big waste in itself. The velocity of such teams and the quality of their deliverables will almost certainly get better if they find ways to act on improvements that are identified in retrospectives.
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Tips for ScrumMasters: Estimate user stories outside Sprint Planning Meetings
Posted by Marco Mulder mid-afternoon: November 11th, 2009
One of the biggest strengths of Scrum is that it is a framework instead of a detailed methodology such as RUP. In Scrum, concepts are described that make essential aspects of projects fall into place in a very powerful way. One does not need a Process Engineer to tailor Scrum before it can be applied successfully. However, because there are many things that Scrum does not describe in detail, there is plenty of room left to mess things up 
In a series of blogs, I want to share some best practices that I have found useful for ScumMasters. In this first blog, I discuss on how to facilitate the estimation of Product Backlog items so that the Product Owner can do release planning.
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Visualizing user stories from idea to production
Posted by Marco Mulder mid-afternoon: October 25th, 2009
In many Scrum projects, user stories that are Done at the end of a sprint have not yet been put into production. In other words, production is often not part of the Definition of Done. There can be several reasons for this. Examples are:
- additional acceptance or integration testing is needed that can not (yet) be done within the sprint;
- user stories have dependencies on hardware of software from an external party that is not yet available;
- minimal marketable features are bigger than what can be produced in one sprint.
The READY Kanban: the Product Owners’ Scrum Board
Posted by Serge Beaumont in the wee hours: September 12th, 2009
In my previous posts about the definition of READY and Flow to Ready, Iterate to Done I have tried to shed some light on the Big Black Hole of Scrum: the Product Owner. This is number three in the series.
In my previous blog post I presented the stages that a backlog item flows through before it gets to Ready. But those were the ideas behind it: in this blog post I'll show how I've implemented them in practice. I'll show you two interesting examples.
Flow to READY, Iterate to DONE
Posted by Serge Beaumont at around evening time: July 4th, 2009
In a previous blog post I introduced the definition of READY, and I wanted to do another "context" blog post before starting on this one: on the difference between flowing ("kanban") and iterating. However, I had much more to say on the subject than I expected, so the thing kept expanding... I'll gather my thoughts and publish that one later. So for the purpose of this blog post just bear with me: I find that a Product Owner's job is best done in a flow style. And since my dear ex-colleague Lars Vonk told me he was waiting for this post, I'll just explain the how here. Lars, here you go...
Update: the third of the series is also done. See here.
Not all backlog items are equal. A backlog item starts out as a rough sketch - usually just the As a.. I want... So That... stanza - and needs to be fleshed out to the extent that it can be picked up by the team in a Sprint. Just like a team has a basic workflow getting stuff to Done, the same applies for the Product Owner role. Scrum does not have any specific support for a Product Owner: somehow the Product Backlog just "happens". In this post I'll try to fill that gap with respect to the process that a Product Owner can follow.
I'll explain a partitioning of the backlog that maps onto a flow, the nature of those partitions and how you proceed through them to get enough stuff Ready for the team to pick up in the next Sprint.
Jeff Sutherland @ nlscrum
Posted by Marco Mulder at around evening time: June 29th, 2009
Last week I co-organized an nlscrum event with a very special guest: Jeff Sutherland. After rushing with him from the airport to our Xebia office, Jeff gave a very inspiring presentation.
The Definition of READY
Posted by Serge Beaumont around lunchtime: June 19th, 2009
Yesterday I gave a presentation on the Integrating Agile conference on the answers I have found in what I consider to be the Big Black Hole of Scrum: the Product Owner role. Based on the feedback I want to blog about this subject, and unblacken the hole a bit...
Edit: the link to the second post in the series turns out to be buried too much at the bottom, so I'm adding it at the top: See Flow to Ready, Iterate to Done
The Definition of Ready
I give CSM trainings with Jeff Sutherland, and about half a year ago he had put something in his material called "the dynamic model of Scrum". The essential feature was the addition of a READY state opposite the DONE state. The idea here is that a team needs to be in a stable, known situation to be able to perform well. It immediately struck a chord with me: I had seen so many teams thrash because the Product Owner could not give them a clear objective, the READY state was exactly the goal to work to. But what was it really, and how do you get there? By now I think I've got some good answers to these questions.
Feature Flow – Increasing velocity using Kanban
Posted by Machiel Groeneveld around lunchtime: May 28th, 2009
A few months ago I was joined a software development team that had some problems getting their process right. The team was doing Scrum by the book, apart from regular production releases they were doing it all: sprints, planning, retrospectives, Scrum board etc. This team didn't need too much explanation of Scrum so I could dive into development straight away, or so I thought. They struggled with getting the sprints right, their velocity was decreasing and spirits were low. Luckily we managed to change our process by changing some basic Scrum practices and replacing some of them with Lean practices, inspired by the new Kanban articles and presentations. Productivity is now higher than ever and we can now focus on what really matters: product quality and customer satisfaction.
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Do you worry about crappy code? Then face reality and grow up.
Posted by Serge Beaumont around lunchtime: April 24th, 2009
My colleague Age pointed me at a blog post by Uncle Bob about a presentation where a Mr. Josuttis presented the inevitability of crappy code because "businesses will do whatever it takes to cut costs and increase revenue, and therefore businesses will drive software quality inexorably downward". Uncle Bob proceeds to go against that argument, but I find it to be a technocratic (DSLs and produce better code) and ultimately unsatisfying answer. My answer to the problem?
Face reality, grow up.
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