29/01/2009 • 5:44 pm 0
I love this article from Michael Smethurst at the Beebs Radio Labs entitled “How we make websites.” It’s really nice to see a collection of good practices all put together. If you’re pressed for time I suggest skipping the presentation at the start … it’s good, but I found the rest of the article to be far more interesting.
Filed under: Agile Software Development
27/01/2009 • 1:02 pm 2
I once worked for a company that prided itself of doing distributed agile. The vision was to have one team split across two different country so that work could continue around the clock. They had the development team in Chicago and a testing team in India. Work completed in Chicago at the end of the day, was tested in India overnight … or at least that was the sales pitch.
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Filed under: Planning, Project Management, Scrum , distributed, distributed agile, distributed scrum, distributed software development, Planning, Project Management, Scrum
20/01/2009 • 1:00 pm 0
After a few months off from client related work, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. A few years ago, I did a tour of Europe which was a fantastic experience. This year I’ll be doing a tour of Australia, and quite possibly New Zealand later in the year.
This is exciting because I haven’t been in this part of the world for nearly 5 years. I’ll be interested to see the difference in work habits and behaviours with the US … and it’ll give me an opportunity to reflect upon how I’ve personally changed.
Here are the dates of my training courses for the first half of the year:
Filed under: Agile Software Development, Project Management, Training , Certified Scrum, CSM, Scrum, Training
13/01/2009 • 1:00 pm 3
Update: I’ve just noticed that Jeff Sutherland also has an article on self organization, should you wish to explore this topic in more detail.
Road traffic in Vietnam is reputed to be some of the worst in the world. It’s chaotic and confusing. Drivers do not follow basic traffic principles, vehicles do not yield right of way, and there is little adherence to traffic laws. Here’s a glimpse of what it’s like:
Even though it appears to be chaotic, there must be some simple set of rules that everyone is abiding by. How else can pedestrians cross the road in this environment? And pedestrians do cross the road as you can see in the video below. At about 18 seconds a man wearing a bright orange shirt appears in the lower left hand corner and slowly makes his way across the intersection.
Self organizing Scrum teams can also appear chaotic. They may appear lack a coherent strategy and structure. So, how is it that Scrum teams can produce software in this type of environment? For that matter, can Scrum teams produce software in this type of environment?
The answer is; Yes, Scrum teams can absolutely produce high quality software in a seemingly chaotic environment. In an recent email conversation a client (who wished to remain anonymous) he reported that he had: “… new defect data showing before Scrum, they had a 85% pass rate with a large standard deviation. They now have a 95% pass rate with almost no standard deviation.”
The key to this apparent contradiction is the same for crossing the road in Ho Chi Minh city. There is an underlying set of rules that everyone on the team has agreed to. And even though the team appears chaotic from the outside, from the point of view of an individual, the Scrum framework allows him to meet his goals without creating gridlock for other team members.
Finally, what is the underlying rule for crossing the road in Vietnam? Walk slowly and don’t stop.
Filed under: Agile Software Development , Agile Software Development, chaos, self management, self organizing
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