Collaboration Game: Where Are Your Keys?
Posted by David Bland in agile, agile games, agile2010 on September 7, 2010
During the Agile2010 conference, I noticed a recurring theme that ran through several of the workshops:
Agile Games
One of the most memorable and rewarding sessions I attended on agile games was not on any stage however, but in an Open Space on the 1st floor of the conference center.
It was entitled Where Are Your Keys? … [Read More]
7 Ways to Humanize the Distributed Team Experience
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on August 17, 2010
If you are involved in a distributed software team, chances are you know just how difficult it is to create personal connections. This is especially true in larger organizations where team members are geographically dispersed around the world and rarely (if ever) meet face to face in person.
I placed the emphasis this problem recently during my talk on distributed agile. My audience received, perhaps unexpectedly, a heavy dose of organizational culture from me instead of “here’s the 1000 different tools you can use” speech.
My message was simple, team members are not resources or metrics, and we should not treat them as such.
I felt the need to build upon that talk. As a result, here are my 7 tips for a sustainable and healthy distributed team experience:… [Read More]
A Mirror for the Team
Posted by David Bland in agile, facilitation, retrospectives, scrum on July 20, 2010
Alistair Cockburn once stated that Scrum is a mirror, and that organizations need to look into the Scrum mirror no matter how difficult it may be.
I would take that a step further and say that the ScrumMaster is the mirror for the team.
A team often unintentionally falls back into situations in which they’ve previously committed to improving.
For example, let’s say that in the last iteration retrospective the team decided that they need to expand the ownership of each story. The last iteration was a success, yet it seemed as though they were not collaborating effectively. Each user story had one developer doing most, if not all of the assigned tasks… [Read More]
Consuming Iteration Demo Feedback
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on July 14, 2010
You are nearing the end of your potentially shippable product demonstration and now you are faced with consuming stakeholder feedback before they leave the room.
So where do you begin?
Step 1: Soliciting Feedback
An empty whiteboard should haunt your dreams!
If you are allowing stakeholders, internal or external, to leave the room without providing feedback then you are neglecting a very important aspect to your software development cycle.
Issues are either being left unspoken or your customers are not engaged at the level they need to be for your team to succeed.
- Simply ask them.
- Avoid analysis paralysis.
- If they have scheduling conflicts send them an interactive demo link.
Tip: Be creative in soliciting feedback and do not take stakeholder avoidance lying down.
10 More Agile Gurus to Follow on Twitter
Posted by David Bland in agile, twitter on July 7, 2010
A little over a year ago I wrote a rather popular post on how you can use Twitter as your inside track for networking with agile software development mentors.
For those to lazy to read the previous article, the ones I listed were:
Michele Sliger
Esther Derby
Jeff Sutherland
Ron Jeffries
Kent Beck
Ward Cunningham
Mike Cottmeyer
Scrum Alliance
Martin Fowler
David Alfaro
Twitter was somewhat less popular then, but I found that the combination of the pay it forward vibe of the agile community and the open medium of Twitter allowed you to forge online relationships prior to meeting people in person
… [Read More]
