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
No Points for You! Come Back 1 Sprint!
Posted by David Bland in agile on April 20, 2011
It is the end of the iteration, and your team notices that a user story is only partially completed. This could have happened for a variety of reasons such as:
- the story was under estimated
- we ran into an impediment we could not remove
- the Product Owner changed the scope of the story
- we opened too many stories and could not finish this one
- a team member became ill
- and so forth and so on…
The team members begin to converse about whether or not they should get credit for the work they have completed on this user story. Ultimately the eyes land on you Mr. Agile Coach / ScrumMaster / Defacto Answerer of Such Things… [Read More]
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 [...]
