In November, I spoke at several Agile Journal events in the Northeast about the benefits of using Agile and how they transcend simply “going faster”. I have already posted the presentation, but like most power point slides, it does not stand that well on its own, so I wanted to write up a summary of my thoughts on this topic for the ages, as well as to develop my own thinking. I share these thoughts with you now. more »

I’ve been asked recently to post the Standalone Iteration Tracking Spreadsheet that I created a few years back – and I finally got around to it.  This spreadsheet was first part of a bigger tool that supported backlog management, release reporting, feature tracking etc.  It became incredibly difficult to maintain so I decided to pull key pieces out and made them independent.  This Iteration or Sprint Tracker is intended to be used by ScrumMasters or Project Managers.  It was never intended to be used by the entire team (though you absolutely can) but rather provide a way for the ScrumMaster to actively track task progress and generate real-time reports and diagnostics.  You will see that it provides far more than the simple traditional burndown.  Along with the Advanced Burn-up it also shows the Category Burn-down.  The Category Burndown is intended to show visibility into the progress of specific categories of task – to identify bottlenecks or constraints. more »

One of my favorite teachers in college was a former managerial consultant and our class enjoyed being regaled with stories of her former clients – a veritable who’s who of major companies – and the challenges they faced. I recall one lecture when she was telling us about reports and communications and how you need to understand the psychological impact they may have on an organization. She was working with a major department store in the early 90’s when the organization was in a steep decline. more »

Recent events allowed me to catch up on light reading and I found myself going through “Sway – The Irreresitable Pull of Irrational Behavior” by Ori and Rom Brafman. The book is a generally enjoyable light read, but it delved into one topic I found very fascinating: irrational loss aversion. more »

Of all the virtues within Agile software development, none are more important than the numerous means of receiving feedback layered into the entire Agile life cycle. The team shares a quick checkpoint at the daily stand up, the scrum master fosters earnest discussions of team effectiveness with periodic retrospectives, project stakeholders can clearly see and interact with potentially shippable code at regularly occurring show and tells and ultimately the entire community can offer feedback due to frequent releases. This is a powerful cycle as early and frequent feedback can help move a product in a positive direction, keep a team excited, and ultimately lead to more business value. But this entire structure is predicated upon the team receiving valuable and relevant feedback. Having such a structure is not enough, we need to make sure the quality of our feedback loops is sufficient too. more »

There are so many well-thought out software development (SD) methods. They are laid out beautifully on paper- diagrams of traceability of activities and artifacts to take ideas from users’ minds all the way through product implementation and operation. Together with some templates, guidance, tools, training, and packaged together in a professional way, a software development method is born. more »

I recently got invited back, for the third time, by a client in the “Leisure, Travel & Tourism” industry to develop applications for their Cruise business. I play the role of an Engagement Manager and Business Demand Manager, whereby I am responsible for business idea harvesting and business idea vetting for the client

In the past two years, this client has moved from a crappy Agile implementation to doing Agile the right way to implementing a lean software development system. They have taken the concept of smaller batches, removal of waste, and continuous flow of value to heart.
more »