Rick Tonoli

Month: November 2008

  • Are you really Agile?

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    Rick Tonoli
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    I found this interesting article by James Shore:The Decline and Fall of Agile which essentially talks along the subject of people claiming to be “agile” but are not really and having this potentially destroying the true “agile” drive. People should be careful that they don’t just grab at buzzwords and ideas without realizing what they’re…

  • How not to run a daily scrum…

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Boris has a particularly interesting and funny video on his blog post: 5 min on Scrum | The 4. Question in a Daily Scrum showing how NOT to run a Daily Scrum. I found it particulary amusing because of the similartities between it and our own Daily Scrums. I highly recommend viewing it.

  • Silos

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Someone told me something interesting the other day…”Silo’s destroy Scrum”, which I found interesting but never fully understood the impact until today. We’re approaching the end of our sprint and only one of the stories has been completed, a severe bottleneck was building up with the test work and when the team approached the “tester”…

  • Too involved….

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Without realizing it I’ve become too involved in the team, almost interfering in the Daily Scrums I suppose. It’s difficult coming from a technical background not to want to interject and comment on what people are saying. How do you approach the scenario where you have information that may be of value to the team…

  • ScrumMaster and Parenting

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Today I sat watching my daughter sleeping and thought about just how similar the role of ScrumMaster is to that of (what I consider proper) parenting, more so from a father’s point of view. A team is like a child, you don’t interfere with their exploration and understanding of the project but rather give guidance,…

  • Scrum in a Nutshell

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    Rick Tonoli
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    I found a nice, concise, description of SCRUM here: Scrum – a knol by Dan R Greening I found particularly interesting the first comment made that clarified my questions regarding the fundamental difference of the feature/story point estimation vs the task/hours estimation techniques. It appears that the reason is pretty much around the comfort of…

  • Change…

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    Rick Tonoli
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    As predicted an item was removed from the sprint backlog and then added a day later. I guess this is a symptom of bad planning and lack of vision by the Product Owner(s)? Or the fact that they don’t communicate between themselves? I’ve tried to explain to the BA (whose acting as a voice for…

  • Everything still good…

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Created the burndown chart today and the scrum wall using spare flipchart paper stuck up on a wall after looking at some ideas on http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com. Everything seems to be running semi smoothly so far, had to fight off some managers wanting to inject work. Also read some interesting stuff on prioritization from a blog post…

  • The (Self Organizing) Team

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    Rick Tonoli
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    The sprint planning sessions are taking long but this is because these concepts are new to the team. They need to be taught that they are the owners of their own destiny and as a team they, and only they, must move forward in this. The current way of working is way different, generally involving…

  • First Sprint Planning…

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Today was interesting… we did our first sprint planning meeting with a team of 5 people. After I’d sat with the designated Product Owner (a BA with a passion for the project) and created what I think is a sufficient product backlog,  I explained the concepts of Scrum to the team (especially around estimation and…