Scrum recommends that a team should feature all the skills required in order to deliver the releasable product increment by the end of the Sprint. Why is it a good thing to have all the skills needed? It is all about dependencies. We try to design our software systems to be loosely coupled and highly cohesive. The...
The Weight of the Christmas Cake
At my daughters school they organize a charity event every year. There are all kinds of different foods, games and lotteries were you can spent money for the good cause. Since it is a british school the mandatory guessing of the Christmas cake weight must not be forgotten. In Agile...
Agile A3 Sprint Report
I really enjoy working with A3 Reports. They have the habit of making you to distill out the crucial information, to really drill down.There are different kinds of A3 reports. The book 'Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System’ describes three different report types. Problem-, Proposal-, and...
An Agile Transition done Right
A little over a year, I kicked off an agile change program at a leading swiss devices company. Two weeks ago, I had a chance to visit them during an open house on their new premisses.This company was fully committed to walk the talk, they decided to do what needed...
Capacity: Help with Excel
For every Sprint Planning the capacity, the hours available for the team is an important ingredient. Usually, this is rather straight forward and easy to do. At my current project we have two teams. Each team is cross-functional, i.e. being able to deliver a piece of done software. However, in...
The 1000 Students Challenge
I've been doing agile coaching and consulting since 2003. First internally, later external working for various consulting organizations all over the globe. Well, one of my key experiences was, that before being able to teach agile, the mind needs to be freed from old school thinking. Think about a major...
Apple, Scrum and the importance of a good Product Owner
My job as a coach and trainer gets me around quite a bit. It is always thrilling to meet new people and to learn about all types of industries. During those encounters, I often get asked how companies like Google, Apple and Facebook do work. Before I left the USA...
Don’t shoot the messenger
In ancient times, it was not uncommon to kill the bearer of bad news. It was a matter of principle. "Don’t bring me bad news. And by the way, don’t fail with your efforts." Luckily, in these days, the worst that could happen to you is to be fired –...
Dreyfus Model and Communication
It is amazing, you can talk to someone, use words that make perfect sense to both parties and still, they don’t communicate at all. I had this experience last week. The Scrum Teams I have been coaching for some time now were scheduled for a meeting with a manager. It...
SID (Scrum In Depth) First Run
As mentioned in my earlier blog entry, I gave my first SID training in Bern, Switzerland on June 5th/6th.The two days were exciting in many aspects. The audience compiled of ten managers, programmers and analysts from different domains was already well on its way to become agile. This meant that...