Twice the Work in Half the Time Jeff Sutherland, one of the co-creators of Scrum and one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto uses the term Hyper-productive team. And everyone hears what he says about producing twice the work in half the time and they are like yes! We want that! Let’s do Scrum…
Check out the video below of Jeremy Webb presenting on "Happiness, A Key Component of Agile" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Jeremy shares how modern research has revealed a great deal about what makes us happy and how that relates to our personal and professional lives. As we learn more, we are discovering…
Check out the video below of Trent Hone presenting on "Kanban and the Power of Distributed Cognition" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Trent explores how Kanban is a powerful tool. Like all tools, it has the potential to influence the way we think and how we approach our problems. Successful implementations reduce friction,…
Before we look into self-organizing teams, let's first take a look at common misconceptions about teams, self-organization and self-management. Common Misconceptions of Self-Organizing Teams A Team is just a group of people working together It’s common thought that if you bring a group of people together, they will form a team. However, that is just a…
Check out the video below of Mike Coottmeyer presenting on "Why Agile is Failing in Large Enterprises" at Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Mike explores why so many large-scale agile transformations are struggling. Some have failed. Others can’t figure out why things aren't working after multiple attempts. It’s easy to blame the people, the process,…
Check out the video below of Michael Hamman presenting on "The Agile Leader: The Inner and the Outer Game: Knowing, Doing, Being" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Michael explores a holistic framework for both understanding the role of the Agile Leader and appreciating what the Agile Leader needs to Know, Do and Be…
Check out the video below of Jeff Sutherland presenting on "Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Jeff shares how Scrum is reshaping how the Department of Defense does business and fights wars, how the FBI tracks criminals, and how Treasury finds deadbeat…
I presented on The Art of Storytelling - User Stories Smells and Anti-patterns at the Agile2016 conference held in Atlanta, GA. I'd previously presented variations of this talk at 2015 Global Scrum Gathering in Pargue, Czech Republic and the 2015 Agile Development Practices Conference in Las Vegas, NV. Below is the abstract, along with the slides…
1. Thinking that everything is a user story Many mistakenly believe that if you are Agile or using Scrum, then you must use user stories and no other format is acceptable. User stories are not required in Scrum. Product Backlog Items can take any format. User stories are a recommended technique due to some benefits over…
Looking at the user story template, which part of the user story is the most important? Is it the Who, What, Why, How, or Acceptance Criteria? The How Let’s first look at the How – It’s important to note that the user story does not contain details about the How. Generally, the how are technical tasks…
Check out the video below of Heather Phythyon presenting on "How to Maximize Positives and Minimize Negatives of Remote Agile Teams" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Heather shares her experience working on different kinds of remote agile teams. https://youtu.be/dyArLtBzBos How to Maximize Positives and Minimize Negatives of Remote Agile Teams by Heather Phythyon
Check out the video below of Fabiola Eyholzer presenting on "Agile HR" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). Fabiola explores how transforming your organization into an agile enterprise is no small deed. And it does not matter where you are on your way towards embracing agility on all levels. There will be a time…
When splitting user stories, we should always split them vertically as if we are slicing a piece of cake. The whole cake is a cake and each vertical slice is a piece of cake with all it’s layers. A horizontal slice might just have the icing, or maybe just the filling, or just the crust and…
Check out the video below of JJ Sutherland presenting on "Agile Leadership" at the Washington DC Scrum User Group (DCSUG). JJ explores how Agile requires major changes in organization, management philosophy, and operations. In our modern moment Agile and Scrum are tossed around by leaders as the newest management fad. What leadership has to recognize is…
Product Increment and the Definition of Done An Increment, broadly defined, is an increase or addition, especially when that addition represents one of several steps in a sequence. In Scrum, the Development Team works to deliver a new Increment of the product every Sprint. Each Increment is a new, updated, usable version of the product, so…