Scrum – Leading Answers

January 1, 2019Agile Project Management, Events, Leadership, Personal Agility, Travel, Warning Signs, Weblogs

Focusing on Results, Not Agile Approaches

Quarter Century 2019 marks the 25 year anniversary of Scrum and DSDM. I was involved in the creation of DSDM in 1994 and was an early adopter of Scrum and FDD shortly afterward. Now, having been at this for a quarter of a century I am reflecting on where my journey has taken me compared to others. I am agnostic about agile. I value the mindset and goals more than approaches that preach a single path. This has had mixed blessings for me. I remain agnostic and impartial, but I have not jumped on any of the approach bandwagons.

November 27, 2018Agile Project Management, Metrics, Risk Management, Tailoring Approaches

What’s in your Backlog?

Let’s explore what you do and do not put in a backlog. How do these sound? Features and non-functional requirements – Absolutely Bug fixes and change requests – Yes, probably Risk avoidance and risk reduction activities – Sure, maybe Opportunity exploitation activities and marketing ideas – Now you’re just getting weird! Team building and social events – Erm, no! Yet, if it’s all just stuff for the team to do, then why not put it in the backlog? Maybe because the customer has not asked for it and the product owner has to own and order it, but let’s look further. If we used a backlog metaphor for prioritizing backlog work items. It may look like this. I am not […]

December 5, 2017Agile Project Management, Certification, Personal Agility, PMI-ACP

Got Your CSM, Now What?

Perhaps, like 500,000+ other people, you have some form of Certified Scrum Master (CSM) credential and are looking to distinguish yourself and continue your learning journey. Of course, learning is not tied to credentials, many people are anti-certification and that is an understandable choice. I encourage lifelong learning separate from credentials. However, for credential seekers, this article explores some common credential pathways beyond the CSM. I want to disclose upfront that I have been involved with the development of ICAgile, PMI-ACP, and DSDM Leadership credentials so I likely have some bias and preferences. However, my goal here is not to recommend specific credentials but instead to explain options and environmental factors to consider, helping people make their own choice based […]

August 15, 2013Agile Project Management, Books, Leadership, Lean

Methodology Wars – Contradictory Constraints or More Options?

Some rifts are occurring in AgileLand – a world supposedly driven by cooperation, trust and appreciative inquiry! Debate is arising about first generation agile methods (XP, Scrum) and newer upstarts like Kanban and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Perhaps because market shifts carry training and consulting revenue with them, but a few people don’t seem very happy, as evidenced by some recent blog posts. Ken Schwaber’s UnSAFe at Any Speed article describe SAFe as a RUP based dinosaur focussing on processes and tools rather than individuals and Interactions. Ian Mitchel summarises the Scrum vs SAFe debate well in his piece Method Wars and speaks to his own SAFe experiences. David Anderson wrote a post on how Kanban is Anti SAFe […]

July 15, 2011October 28, 2025Agile Project Management, Estimating, Planning, Teams

Agile Prioritisation

A uniting thread through the variety of different agile methods is the fact that they all employ work prioritisation schemes. While the terminology varies–Scrum for instance has a “product backlog”, FDD a “feature list” and DSDM a “prioritised requirements list”–the concept is the same. The project works through a prioritised list of items that have discernable business value. Prioritisation is required because it enables the flexing of scope to meet budget or timeline objectives while retaining a useful set of functionality (Minimum Marketable Release). Prioritisation also provides a framework for deciding if/when to incorporate changes. By asking the business to “Tell me what it is more important than?” and then inserting the new change into the prioritised work list […]

April 29, 2011Agile Project Management, Events, Games, Metrics, Weblogs

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

"Calling Hallelujah Always Offends Someone" I am glad the PMI is finally recognizing agile methods, Ken Schwaber recently posted about the PMI Agile Certification, saying that he “…welcomes this and looks forward to PMI shifting from its previous approach to an agile approach. The test of this will be, of course, the success of the projects that adhere to its principles. In the past, the success (or yield) of their predictive approach has been less than 50% of projects (on time, on date, with the desired functionality.)” He was quoting from the Standish CHAOS Report that comes out every couple of years and documents the success and failure rates of IT projects. The CHAOS reports have been published since 1994, […]

August 10, 2010Agile Project Management, Planning, Teams

5 Things to Think about After Stand-up

Following my post on 5 Things to Think About Before Stand-Up, it is only right that I follow it up with the 5 things I think about after Stand-up. 1) Issues – Anything that was reported as a blocker, impediment, or issue to making progress needs removal or avoidance. Agile employs a “constraints view” of production systems similar to Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints where the role of the manager is to remove impediments from the process. The impediments or blocker issues reported at stand-up should become the project managers To-Do list to ensure their resolution. 2) Velocities Deviations – We know the task estimates so when a 2 day task has taken 4 days and is still going with no end […]

August 9, 2010Agile Project Management, Planning, Teams

5 Things to Think About Before Stand-Up

Stand-up meetings are familiar to agile teams and as the saying goes “familiarity breeds contempt” or at least complacency. It is all too easy to drift into a daily routine of holding a stand-up meeting without getting the full set of benefits out of it. So this led me to consider: what are the 5 most important things to think about as a project manager before stand-up? (If you are using Scrum and have a Scrummaster role that is distinct from the project manager, then I would suggest these are things the Scrummaster should be considering) 1) A View of the WIP – A view of the work in progress is critical to understanding the items reported from the team. If you […]

June 19, 2010Agile Project Management, Books, Events, Leadership, Metrics, Planning, Travel, Weblogs

Agile Preservation or Progression?

Back in 1994 when we were defining DSDM, I remember our experiment of getting the user community engaged in the application architecture. (Not a successful experience!) It was at Data Sciences in Farnborough, UK and we were working on a project for a government client called ECGD. Following ideas from Enid Mumford on Participative Design we were testing how far the benefits of closer business engagement went and discovered a limit. For us at least, having the business closely engaged in scope discussions, screen designs, and planning was extremely positive, but having them engaged in our architecture sessions was a net negative experience. They leapt to implementation ideas, disregarded IS strategy, and did not know enough about the architectural issues to […]

October 20, 2009Agile Project Management, Books, Games, Leadership

Scrum, Bikram Yoga and The Attention Economy

What do Scrum and Bikram Yoga have in common? They both cater for the attention economy. Humans derive a lot of their sense of security and confidence, what psychologist Albert Bandura calls “self-efficacy,” from predictable routines. Without these predictable routines we can feel uncomfortable and uncertain. I was talking to a colleague, Mike McCullough, last week who was creating agile training materials and quick-start templates to help organizations adopt agile. I was teasing him on the irony of creating prescriptive templates to guide people through an adaptive process that should probably be tailored for each project. He agreed, but pointed out that definitive models (even if not optimal) are much easier to sell than open-end frameworks requiring adjustment and set-up. […]