Agile Without Social Engineering

In 2006, Ivor Jacobson famously summarized, "Most important, agile is about social engineering."  And indeed one of the things that makes so many agilists so darned loveable is that we are, as a friend of mine put it yesterday, "the kind of people who want to create a work place where you can go and still be a human being."  Not a "resource," not an "FTE," but a human!  It's an inspiring dream!

The Rules of Scrum: Every Sprint is Four Weeks or Less in Duration

The length of a Sprint determines how quickly a Scrum Team can “inspect and adapt” to changing circumstances and learning.  Scrum, as a tool for product development, sets...
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Estimation as Hypothesis

Experimentation is a powerful learning tool. When I was young, I performed scientific experiments by mixing chemicals together to see what they would do. I learned that most random...
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Evolve or Die: Build an Agile Business

I love riding 100 mph on twisty, turning race tracks -- my favorite is Laguna Seca in Monterey, California. In racing, as in business, keeping the finish line in mind is important,...
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How do we estimate?

There have been some web posts and twitter comments lately that suggest some people have a very narrow view of what techniques constitute an estimate. I take a larger view, that any...
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What’s Your Culture?

In this post I want to talk about company culture. Every company has a culture. Some are outstanding, perhaps some are close to criminal, but I guess most are just mediocre. How do...
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How do you estimate on an Agile project?

If you’re interested in techniques for estimation, you should take a look at this pdf ebook. It contains half-a-dozen essays on estimating in agile projects, drawn from our experiences...
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The NoEstimates Movement

There’s a lot of interesting talk and thinking, going on under the heading of #NoEstimates. Woody Zuill and Neil Killick are two of the most vocal proponents. The basic idea, as I...
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A collection of funny Scrum videos

by Kane Mar, 25 April 2013
The Agile Blogosphere

Richard Hundhausen has put together a great list of funny Scrum/Agile related videos. Some of these are classics such as High Moon Studios: Portrait of Scrum and Adam Weisbart’s...
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Automated Agile Testing Is Needed, And Someone Needs To Decide To Do It

Did you wake up this morning and think to yourself, "gee, I think I'd like to try some agile today?"  Allow me to leap between you and your coffee to announce that your adoption...
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Using Economics to Prioritize your Backlog

How do you prioritize your features?  Is it a gut-feel kind of thing?  Is it based on who’s yelling the loudest?  Is it based on what drives your next big sale?  Do...
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Scrum 201: Desire

Any sports coach knows that the Team must have desire. In my classes I talk to the people about how much improvement they expect to make in 1 year. With 1 team.  Often it is in the...
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Scrum 201: Team

We want all Scrum teams to become hyper-productive. Why? Well, so they can enjoy life and be satisfied.  And feel like they accomplished something.  So, in part, this requires that...
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Why should the PO attend the Daily Scrum?

Umm. Good question.  We partly discussed this in an earlier post. First, the Scrum Guide (2011) does not require that the PO attend the Daily Scrum.  If you asked Jeff Sutherland...
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Fixed Bid Agile Without Cognitive Dissonance

I've been following a LinkedIn forum discussion with interest entitled "Could we use Agile methodology with a fixed bid contract."  There are some quick, snappy answers to the question...
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It’s Ok to Have a Test Column on Your Board

We have lots of conversations with customers about how testing should work and when it should happen. Often, customers want to have an ‘in test’ state, or column on their boards....
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