The Project Manager – conductor or one-man band?
There are many different metaphors used to describe Project Managers. So many in fact that you may have cause to ask What the Hell is project Management, Anyway? Project Management metaphors Some of the most common metaphors used include: Sports Coach Military Commander Movie Director While some of the more obscure metaphors include: Batman Lifeguard Cat […]
Scrum Maturity Model presentation in Sydney on Wednesday 27 January.
A quick heads-up that James Cowden is giving a presentation next Wednesday night in Sydney on the Scrum Maturity Model (SMM). This should be an interesting topic with Scrum being a leading Agile methodology, and Maturity Model bringing back memories of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which was fairly popular in the 1990’s.
Spice up the Monday morning stand-up
The morning stand-up meetings are a great tool for keeping the whole team informed, and for identifying and resolving issues in a timely manner. They can however become somewhat repetitive. One technique I’ve used before is that in the Monday morning stand-up to ask “What did you do yesterday?” and to literally mean yesterday (i.e. Sunday). […]
Product Development @ Atlassian talk tomorrow night.
Just a quick reminder that Joseph Ayoub is giving a talk on Product Development at Atlassian tomorrow night, Thursday 14/1/2016. Here’s a quick synopsis: With an ambitious mission statement to ‘unleash the potential in every team’ and ‘advance humanity though the power of software’, Atlassian isn’t afraid to do things differently. Developers, Product people and […]
How to “slice the elephant” – real-life Agile Scaling.
Henrik Kniberg, author of the “Scrum and XP from the Trenches”, gave the opening keynote at the Agile Tour Bangkok conference on Saturday 21 November in Thailand. His talk was titled “Real-life Agile Scaling” and includes some great insights into scaling Scrum. Especially interesting is his take on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which he believes […]
Has Agile Outlived Its Usefulness?
If Agile is indeed an umbrella term, then the umbrella continues to increase in size. While Scrum, XP and DSDM have been under cover for quite some time, many more additions have recently taken their place in the shade including Kanban, Lean, LeSS, SAFE. Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) are hot […]
Adventures of Agile Adoption in Australia – Speakers Panel Discussion
End of year get-together featuring an impressive line-up of speakers: • Peter Merel – Agile : The Next Generation • Matt Sharpe – Global Views Towards Scrum Implementation • Rowan Bunning – Agile Risk Management • Shane Williamson – Lean Product Management • John Smart – Behaviour Driven Development & 3 Amigos • TJ Gokcen – Keep Calm and Use Kanban • Dave Bales […]
Reminder: Agile Tour Sydney November 19th
Just a reminder that the annual Agile tour is on again in Sydney on November 19th. It’s a great opportunity to learn and to mix with fellow Agile-ists. http://at2015.agiletour.org/sydney.html
Free Book: Scrum and XP from the Trenches – 2nd Edition
The tricky part to agile software development is that there is no manual telling you exactly how to do it. You have to experiment and continuously adapt the process until it suits your specific situation. This book aims to give you a head start by providing a detailed down-to-earth account of how one Swedish company […]
The Chicken and the Pig – which one are you?
Recently I was having a meeting and a number of the participants really had little to do with the project or its outcomes. I was reminded of the classic Chicken and Pig joke. If you’re familiar with Ken Schwaber‘s Scrum training then you’ve probably heard or, or seen this, before. If not then I hope that you get a […]