Archive for category agile
It’s Not You, It’s Your Proposal
Posted by David Bland in agile on April 18, 2011
Like many others who submitted to the Agile Conference this year, I received the dreaded rejection notification that no one wants to open.
We regret to inform you that based on the stage producers’ consideration of your proposal and the reviewer feedback, they do not feel that your proposal as submitted is the best fit for the Agile 2011 program…
Bummer.
Since this was also my second year reviewing proposals for the Agile Conference, I wanted to provide a bit of insight as to why I believe so many talks, such as mine, were close but ultimately rejected… [Read More]
Introducing Kantban(tm)
Posted by David Bland in agile, humor, lean on April 1, 2011
As you know, Kanban became popular years ago with the Toyota Production System and has recently been superfitted to software development practices. While the Agile & Kanban communities are fighting over which philosophy is better, a courageous few have risen above the fray to introduce the next evolution of Kanban dubbed: Kantban Pronounced “kah-yunt-bah-yun”, this [...]
Distributed ScrumMasters Update
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on March 30, 2011
It has been over a year since I first gave my Distributed ScrumMasters talk to friends & coworkers around Washington, DC. Since then I’ve learned quite a bit about myself, how I speak publicly and what people are most concerned about with Distributed Scrum. After careful consideration, inspecting and adapting I have updated my original [...]
Are We Pairing Enough?
Posted by David Bland in agile on March 3, 2011
How do you know if your team is pairing enough? You can attempt to visualize this with a pair programming slider, but I feel as though it might be too abstract for some of you.
Here is a simple thought exercise that I learned from Jeff Nielsen that you can use to help answer whether or not your team is pairing enough. It will only take 1 or 2 minutes of your time, and can easily be incorporated into the natural flow of your iteration retrospective… [Read More]
Dipping Your Toes Into Kanban
Posted by David Bland in agile, extreme programming, kanban, scrum, scrumban on January 26, 2011
The following post was originally a guest article for Planbox and is the basis for my proposed Agile2011 Lightning Talk
Like me, you may have read about the growing popularity of kanban in the agile software development community. Perhaps its mysterious allure and intriguing pronunciation (kahn-bahn not kayun-bayun) have piqued your curiosity, yet you struggle with finding a pragmatic way to apply it to your current software development process?
Interestingly enough, the beauty of kanban is that you can apply it to your two week iterations… right now if you like without that much disruption. In fact, you may even find it so useful that you’ll find other ways to work the kanban mojo.
Let me explain… [Read More]
