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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Life on Tour: JAX 2009 Conference Review
Posted by Andrew Phillips in the wee hours: April 30th, 2009
Fitnesse – Selenium integration struggles
Posted by Cirilo Wortel around lunchtime: April 23rd, 2009
Recently I was challenged by a client to test a new web application in an Agile project. The team was new at working Agile and even more with working together with a functional tester, altogether this resulted in me getting very little development support from the team.
Because the lack of tooling and support I focussed my efforts on just recording test-scripts using Selenium IDE, hoping I would be able to reuse them once I got the development support I had been requesting. The plan was to integrate the pre-recorded scripts in a more extended test environment in a later stage of the project.
11 tips that will ensure early death of a Distributed Agile Project
Posted by Anurag Shrivastava mid-afternoon: January 28th, 2009
You never believed in it. You wondered if it could ever have worked for anybody in past two decades. However, it has arrived. You are going to work Agile and worst still Distributed Agile Offshore. You were skeptical about this right from the beginning when it started in your company but no one would listen to you.
Here are 11 tips that will ensure early death of a Distributed Agile project:
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My inferences about Agile from Sanjiv Augustine’s workshop at Xebia India
Posted by Abhinav Kumar in the early evening: November 21st, 2008
Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending and interacting with Sanjiv Augustine in his workshop on “Transitioning to Agile project management”. Sanjiv is a well known thought leader in the field of Agile and Scrum. He is an author of the book called “Managing Agile Projects”. I felt he was very practical and Agile in the way he conducted the session. Although the workshop was designed to help project managers make a smooth transition from traditional methodologies (typically waterfall) to Agile project management, I felt there was a lot in it for everybody.
To do justice with the title of the session, he did address different roles, responsibilities, phases and associated processes of Agile software development using Scrum. He compared Scrum and Waterfall with a focus on planning, execution, monitoring and adapting phases of software development from project management point of view.
However I am trying to present the session from traditional vs Agile perspective. The blog has been divided in the following three sections.
- A case for transition to Agile(Scrum and XP).
- Benefits of practicing Agile.
- Things that have changed.
QCon San Francisco 2008 – Architects & Agilists
Posted by Erik Rozendaal in the wee hours: November 21st, 2008
The QCon San Francisco 2008 conference was opened with an interesting keynote by Rebecca Parsons and Martin Fowler. In their talks they addressed the often strained relationship between traditional architects and agile development and how to improve this relationship to the benefit of both the agile development team and architects. These benefits include cross-project and cross-department knowledge exchange, sharing of the architects many years of experience with the developers, and only working on the architecture that is actually needed. (more...)
Agile 2008 – ideas and inspiration
Posted by Machiel Groeneveld mid-morning: August 27th, 2008
Agile 2008 is an international conference in Toronto on Agile software development. It's held from the 4th to the 8th of August. It's gaining in popularity with 1600 participants from all over the world. Of course most attendants are from the US and Canada.
I attended this conference and gave a presentation together with Olav Maassen. I want to share some of the inspiring ideas and 'vibes' that I picked up at the conference.
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