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 you can or you can't, you are usually right. So, let us work backwards. To me, in most business situations, the main thing is satisfying the customer. Helping the customers solve their problem(s). This is very hard because: *...
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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...
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Product Owner & the Team

by Joe Little, 16 January 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

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),...
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Better distributed Scrum

by Joe Little, 19 October 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

I was asked today for my main suggestions for getting better at distributed Scrum. Advice 1. Make a fair comparison between distributed and collocated in your specific situation. a....
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One reason for "Business Value Engineering"

by Joe Little, 14 October 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

I said recently that "business value engineering" is the place we can improve the most.  By which I mean: (a) identifying the small features that the customer will want the most...
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Scrum Team in Waterfall Land! What to do?

by Joe Little, 13 October 2011
Agile Teams, Scrum

The real question sent to me was:What are some tips for integrating our SCRUM model with non-Scrum groups who will not be adopting the process?One can go many places with this question,...
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Getting Higher Velocity – Take 3

by Joe Little, 11 October 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

A recent conversation leads me to discuss some basic issues. Why do we care about velocity? To be honest, higher velocity is less important than better focus on business value. Higher...
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How does QA fit in?

by Joe Little, 27 September 2011
Agile Testing

Liz! asked a question.  She and her team are starting agile and she can't get much info on where QA fits into to Agile. First, I want to reiterate Jeff Sutherland's concern, that...
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Joe’s Unofficial Scrum Checklist

by Joe Little, 25 August 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

Henrik Kniberg did a Scrum Checklist a while ago. Occasionally students at courses ask me for a similar thing. One always wonders: what are the most important questions to ask? What...
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Better Retrospectives

by Joe Little, 20 August 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

In Scrum (and in life), we have periodic retrospectives.  In Scrum, we have a time-boxed Retrospective meeting once each sprint. Why?  Well, the main reason is to get better...
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The Biggest Problem

by Joe Little, 16 August 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

Jeff Sutherland believes that the biggest problem with Scrum teams, the most frequently encountered problem, is that the Team does not have working product at the end of the Sprint. This...
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The Michael Phelps attitude

by Joe Little, 15 August 2011
Agile Teams

Whatever thing we do, what is our attitude?  In work or in much of the rest of life, I think our attitude should be some interesting combination of humble and aggressive. My business...
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Yogi Berra quotes

by Joe Little, 14 August 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

As some of you may know, my sense of humor, such as it is, finds Yogi Berra quotes both entertaining and educational.  I use some of them in my classes. My hope is that the humor...
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