Rotating the ScrumMaster Role

by Mike Cohn, 27 January 2012 | Scrum, The Agile Blogosphere

Some teams that struggle with choosing the best ScrumMaster decide that an appropriate strategy is to rotate the role among all team members. I don’t advocate this, as I don’t think it demonstrates an appropriate respect for the challenges and significance of the role. In my family, we rotate who cleans the table and loads the dishwasher. Any of us can do that job. We do not, however, rotate who...
read more

Three Keys to Successful Product Ownership

The Product Owner is both one of the most important roles in Scrum and often the most difficult to fill. In this post, I will explore a few aspects of successful product ownership that...
read more

Committing for the Sprint

by Joe Little, 23 January 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

This is, to me, still a New Year.  And a friend suggested I talk about New Years' resolutions.  Or something like them, Sprint commitments. Henry Ford said: Whether you think...
read more

Are managers evil?

by Joe Little, 23 January 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

First, many have said that there are a lot of bad managers in the US, and in the world. Peter Drucker worked on this. W. Edwards Deming had his ideas, and worked on this. And many...
read more

Modifying Scrum – You THINK you know better…

by Mike Vizdos, 18 January 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

Modifying Scrum is a bad idea. Do you hear me?  Do you REALLY think modifying Scrum is a good idea? Why? Scrum is a simple framework.  It works. Yet, in most places I...
read more

Important Words about Scrum and Tools

Ken Schwaber, the founder of Scrum, has a blog.  In it, someone mentioned that Scrum is changing.  Ken responded: If you change the Scrum framework you just simply aren’t using...
read more

All About Agile: The Book (Publisher Wanted)

by Kelly Waters, 17 January 2012
All About Agile

Hi all. After nearly 5 years of blogging about agile, I have just finished converting my blog posts into a 430-page A5 book. It's basically a compilation of everything I've written...
read more

Agile Planning Tools

One of the most exhilarating moments in my coaching career was when I entered the client team room one Monday morning to find they were pulling the cards and tape off of their backlog...
read more

Product Owner & the Team

Is the product owner a member of the team?  Yes. Fully and completely.What is the biggest problem that most teams face? That, at the high level (value) or the low level (details),...
read more

Road Rage: You and Your New Agile Teammates

As you join your teammates in your sparkling new agile team room, and you all do your best to quickly "become agile," I guarantee that despite being surrounded by brightly colored index...
read more

Special New Year Offer – Get My eBook For Just $25

by Kelly Waters, 10 January 2012
Agile Materials

Happy new year to you!  I've been selling my ebook 'Agile Made Easy!' for some time now, so I've decided to make it available as a new year special offer for just $25, instead of the...
read more

Can-do Thinking Makes Risk Management Impossible

“Can-do thinking makes risk management impossible. Since acknowledging real risk is defeatism, the risk management function in a can-do organization is restricted to dealing with...
read more

Seven Options for Handling Interruptions in Scrum and Other Agile Methods

Almost three years ago we wrote a brief article about interruptions.  In that article, we described four methods of dealing with interruptions.  I would like to expand on those four...
read more

Positive emotions and purpose

This post is really a sidebar to my musings about purpose and vision. It’s reference information rather than any real thoughts of my own, which I’ve pulled together because I wanted...
read more

Faster. Faster. Faster.

Recently I’ve tried to analyze what affects development velocity. Every single product owner wants to have features delivered as soon as possible. It may sound that race for better...
read more

Presentation: Smart Agile Metrics

I will be presenting on “Smart Agile Metrics” at the upcoming Calgary Agile Methods User Group (CAMUG) meeting Tuesday January 10th.Here is the outline: “Collecting and reporting...
read more

ScrumMasters – Feel Like Giving Up Sometimes?

Welcome to 2012. Here we are.  Another year to look forward to. Another year to look back on. Looking back on 2011 for the blog at www.implementingscrum.com, I did not publish...
read more