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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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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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.
Agile Distributed Development done right – QCon London 2009
Posted by Guido Schoonheim in the early evening: March 9th, 2009
Working distributed is all about handling distance. Geography, culture, methods & tools, timezones, languages are all adding to that distance. Not measured in miles but in people.
How to get a focus on individuals and interactions when your people are distributed across the globe? What is the secret sauce to use to get it running smoothly?
The classical route of bringing this 'gap' under control involves adding process and handovers. It actually forces you to go into a waterfall-like model and therefor widens the Gap instead of bridging it. All waste is institutionalized. Sounds like a horror to you? It does to me.
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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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