Archive for category scrum
Impediment Colored Glasses
Posted by David Bland in agile, lean, scrum, scrumban on November 19, 2011
impediment – a hindrance or obstruction in doing something: “an impediment to progress”.
When you are an acting ScrumMaster or Agile Project Manager, it is common to seek out impediments so that you can help to remove them. Before you know it, impediments seem to be all around you ranging from the individual, team and organizational levels. A person can quickly feel consumed and overwhelmed by this new found responsibility.
A few years ago I was having a conversation with a colleague about all of the impediments I’d uncovered and how I needed to remove them as soon as possible. About half way through the conversation he interjected “These are not impediments, these are merely the tasks we need to complete our user stories”.
Then it dawned on me, I was so focused on removing impediments that I had begun to view our tasks as blockers to progress.
I was wearing impediment colored glasses…. [Read More]
Course Canvas
Posted by David Bland in agile, course canvas, kanban, scrum, tools on October 28, 2011
In attempting to create courses and workshops to educate people on agile techniques, I found that I’ve struggled to find the right flow.
So I created a tool to help me do just that.
Introducing the Course Canvas.
It uses techniques rooted in agile and visual management to allow me to craft a course with less effort than a cumbersome outline.
It is also a Minimum Viable Product, as I only built just enough to learn whether or not you will find it useful.
Take it for a spin and let me know what you think.
Scrum Extensions (or what we already do to make Scrum work)
Posted by David Bland in scrum on October 11, 2011
In case you have not already heard, there is a recent press release on Scrum.org with regards to the adoption of Scrum Extensions.
Today’s announcement marks a new era in Scrum’s evolution by making available a public mechanism for providing feedback on the Scrum Guide and a model for proposing extensions to the basic framework.
Now I’m all in favor of extending Scrum, and even the name Scrumology (apologies to Kane Mar who probably gets a fair amount of my hate mail) was my take on all of the ways in which you may need to extend it to succeed in your organization. In fact, I’ve taken quite a bit of criticism for my rather progressive take on the Scrum philosophy over the years.
So on one hand, I feel somewhat validated that Scrum.org has opened it up for extensions.
On the other hand, Scrum no longer belongs to Jeff Sutherland & Ken Schwaber.
Scrum belongs to you… [Read More]
CSM or PMP, Which Cert Earns You More Money?
Posted by David Bland in agile, jobs, project management, scrum on May 12, 2011
Let’s put aside the ethical arguments about certifications for a moment and look at the salary data behind Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) and Project Management Professional (PMP).
A Certified ScrumMaster earns 3% more money than a ScrumMaster.
How to Create a Burndown Chart in Google Docs
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum, tools on May 3, 2011
A burndown chart can be used by an agile team to track their progress against a release plan. In its simplest form, the chart consists of time on the X axis and the amount of work on the Y axis.
You can choose to burn down on whatever metrics that are relevant to your team. Since I prefer burning down on story points against iterations, that is what we’ll use for this tutorial.
It only takes a Google Account, a few minutes of your spare time and best of all it’s free!
Create a Google Spreadsheet
