Archive for the ‘Scrum’ Category

Live Notes and A-ha’s from #agiledaynyc

September 19, 2013

“Stop Communicating; Start Connecting” is today’s theme.

Achim Nowak Keynote: the importance of energy connections and fact of connection to physical body. Avignon ports open in the firewall.
Mary Poppendieck: develop your awareness mind so autonomic mind takes over with expertise when has to move fast. By the same token, if one wants to behave in kindness must PRACTICE.
Karl Scotland: No constraints are chaos. People may have own set of policies, but no shared understanding. Want some constraints, but loose constraints.

Source Material for a Deck on Agile for Executives

March 29, 2011

I thought to collect some links here for use as source material in writing a short deck for Executives (in Advertising or Marketing) describing Agile.  (UPDATE: Note – the deck is not yet written – this is my raw research).

My criteria for quoting from these (or being inspired by these) is that the material has to be value-focused.  Why Agile?  What’s the benefit?  How is it better than what I’m doing now?  And must apply outside of software development. Maybe apply directly to marketing.

I think I also need to give very high-level descriptions of Crystal Clear, Kanban and Scrum, possibly XP and possibly Lean.  But I want my deck to be very, very short and succinct.

I may update this post over time.

Here is my first list at 8 AM on 3/29:

Agile Scout’s “Agile is NOT a Methodology”

Agile Methodology.com’s “Agile Methodology”

Dr. Alistair Cockburn “Balancing Lightness with Sufficiency”

Dmitri Maex for Ogivly’s DoubleThink “Agile Markerting Part II: Learnings from Product Development”

Decks by Jeff Patton – read the first deck

Dr. Jeff Sutherland on Agile Principles and Values (his site has great stuff too, but this is at Microsoft)

Jason Yip’s article “It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings”

John Paul Titlow for ReadWriteWeb.com “What is Agile Commerce”

Excellent article by Ken Schwaber on driving value for business titled “Major Releases are a Failure”

Lyssa Adkins’ “What is Agile?”

Michael Sahota’s “Agile Fits Better in Some Company Cultures Than Others”

Scrum Alliance’s “The Scrum Framework in 30 Seconds”

Scott Ambler’s “Bureaucracy Isn’t Discipline”

Scott Brinker (Chief Martec) “Ideas for an Agile Marketing Manifesto”

Scrum.org’s Scrum Guide page

Tobias Mayer’s “Simple Scrum” , “Scrum: A New Way of Thinking” and “The Essence of Scrum”

VersionOne’s “What is Agile” (although pretty development-centric)

Suggestions more than welcome.

Updated 3/29 – 3:45 PM – with articles by Schwaber, Sutherland, Cockburn, and Patton. Alphabetized.  Hm. The list is getting too long – probably not a good page for executives, but good for us detailed people to find source material.

Scrum and Group Dynamics

November 25, 2010

http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/77-scrum-and-group-dynamics

Written by Jorgen Fors on the ScrumAlliance.org site, this article talks about some of the issues you might come up against when implementing Agile.

He basically suggests that the team passes through three phases, according to FIRO, a study done in the 50s. The phases are: Inclusion, Control and Affection where “Affection” is the highest phase.  To get to that phase, the leadership must go through three phases also.  These are Sure and Controlling at first, migrating to Analytic and independent and ending on Unselfish and Caring.

Not sure I 100% agree because I think it could be that there are team members that may suffer from, for instance, painful shyness and other personal insecurities that make them seem ill-suited for a small group dynamic that you have in Scrum. Have to think about it a bit more, but my instinct is that it could be that a shy person might change and grow confident with Scrum, depending on the team. But, also depending on the team, the shy person could become more withdrawn.  Something I’m continuing to consider and think over as I form Scrum teams.