Agile antipattern: Treating symptoms not causes
Agile teams often get to a point where they have a number of problems which must be addressed. During retrospectives these items keep coming up…
New to Agile? Use a Rules of Engagement document.
How do we work together? Seems like a simple question, right? How wrong you could be! For an agile team, working together is vitally important,…
Agile antipattern: Hiding unfortunate truths
“Unfortunate truths” are things which are true – unfortunately! I’ve heard the phrase used by defense lawyers and I have to admit it is pretty…
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…
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…
How to Give a Great Sprint Demo
Exciting. Entertaining. Do these words describe your sprint demo meetings? Or are boring and unfocused more accurate? I can’t believe how many times I’ve come…
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…