Archive for category scrum
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 [...]
Scrum Pocket Guide Giveaway
Posted by David Bland in contest, scrum on February 2, 2011
The folks over at AgileScout have been gracious enough to provide me with an advanced copy of their Scrum Pocket Guide.
It is a succinct, well thought out and easy to read guide for anyone using Scrum within their organization.
After reading it, I liken it to Roman Pichlers Agile Product Management with Scrum book.
Yes, it is that good.
For a limited time, you can have the Scrum Pocket Guide for $17.00 FREE!
All you need to enter is… [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]
And Now You Are Just a Project Manager
Posted by David Bland in agile, certification, jobs, scrum on October 25, 2010
You’ve seen the job description:
Project Manager / ScrumMaster
- Must have knowledge of traditional project management
- CSM preferred
- PMP nice to have
These are becoming more and more common as of late, and typically posted by 3rd party recruiters working on behalf of large enterprise organizations.
What they fail to mention in the description is how once their agile adoption fails, you’ll be a full time Project Manager
… [Read More]
Rotating Team Roles
Posted by David Bland in agile, facilitation, scrum, team room on October 12, 2010
Generally there are two schools of thought when it comes to Scrum team facilitation:
1. A dedicated ScrumMaster facilitates each session.
2. Each team member takes a turn facilitating sessions.
I’ll illustrate how I’ve approached the latter and explain below why I’ve seen it work quite well.
Daily Standups
Typically I start out facilitating daily standups using techniques that I’ve spoken about before. I’ve found that it takes 1 or 2 iterations of playing the ScrumMaster role in the daily standup before the team members feel comfortable enough to step in. Once I step back, we rotate through the iteration so that ideally each team member has an opportunity to facilitate at least once.
