Agile antipattern: Comparing velocity between teams
I recently saw an excellent blog post about iteration velocity. Good reading in general, but the last paragraph really got my attention and is why…
Author: Bob Hartman
Known as Agile Bob, brings over 35 years of experience and broad industry knowledge cultivated by serving in almost every role in the software industry including developer, tester, documentation writer, trainer, product manager, project manager, business analyst, senior software engineer, development manager and executive. Over the past 20+ years Bob has grown from being an early adopter of Agile to his current status as a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST) and Certified Enterprise Coach℠ (CEC) and an expert in training, coaching and mentoring across all areas of Agile development. Bob is a popular speaker, having spoken at numerous major conferences, seminars, workshops and user group meetings where his engaging style, holistic view of development and personal anecdotes are always well received by attendees. See his upcoming courses by clicking on Upcoming Courses under Agile For All in the menu at the top of your screen.
Agile anti-pattern: Going to longer iterations
This is another common theme among teams just starting with agile. It usually goes something like this: The team has an unsuccessful iteration. They determine…
New to agile? Do the simplest thing that works – THEN STOP!
As an agile trainer and coach I often see new teams struggle with a simple question: “How much to do on a user story?” A lot…
Agile antipattern: Code freezes during each iteration
Over the past 18 months I’ve encountered a number of teams where it is standard practice to have a code freeze late in the iteration. …
Agile is like… golfing?
Well, if agile could be like cooking and a fishing trip could be agile it only made sense that another of my hobbies would be agile in…
Agile Ponderings: Certification – useful or not?
I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about certification recently. Why? Because I needed to decide if I should apply to become a Certified…
New to agile? Get focused with a vision
Bear with me on this blog entry. It takes a bit of setup until I get to the main point. Lately I’ve been doing a…
Agile antipattern: Using manual tests
In an agile environment manual testing is fine – except for when it isn’t! In particular, everyone recognizes manual regression testing takes time. When using a…
New to agile? Tips for better daily stand-ups
As an agile coach I have attended a lot of daily stand-up meetings. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a meeting…
Agile Pondering: Who leads an agile team?
On Saturday, April 11, I ran a PMI Mile Hi workshop I called “Agile Leadership is Overrated – Isn’t It?” The workshop was built on…
Agile antipattern: Extending an iteration
I had a previous blog post about stopping an iteration and how it was a really bad idea. Another blog post was about moving work…
Making Agile a Reality for All
I recently saw a Tweet (Twitter message for those of you that don’t know) from Michele Sliger about an interesting premise of using 6 words…
Agile Architecture – It is NOT an Oxymoron!
Many companies adopting agile have a hard time with the architecture and design of their large systems. They like the concept of agile, but can’t…
Ten Ways to Improve Your Planning Poker Results
People who promote the use of Planning Poker understand some of the main reasons why it is successful. People like Mike Cohn have been very instrumental…
Agile is like… cooking???
On Monday, during my flight from Denver to Boston I sat next to a delightful couple who were both retired. When they asked the inevitable…
New to agile? Don’t settle for mediocrity
James Shore recently changed the entire focus of his company. This blog entry gives his reasons why. The blog post really struck a chord with…
New to agile? Tools for distributed agile
I’ve been working the past several weeks with some highly distributed teams. Each team requires a way to track their project effectively (when you have…
Never start a sentence “We can’t be agile because…”
I recently started filling out a form which included a question regarding the training I’ve done. As I filled it out I realized that in…
Agile Pondering: Should an iteration ever be stopped?
It is accepted in the agile world that if an iteration or sprint is going extremely badly then it can be stopped – rebooted I…
Agile antipattern: Moving work from one iteration to the next
All agile teams start at something less than the completely proficient level. Nearly all of those teams do not successfully complete their very first iteration. …