Month: December 2008
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My First Scrum Board…
This was my first attempt at a usable scrum board. There are some flaws, like the blank story card in the Product Backlog?! (only noticed this now, no idea how that got there, will have to find out) and the fact that there’s a story that has no tasks assigned to it yet is not…
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Change…
The new year will bring a plethora of change in my life, a new company, new goals, new challenges, new ideas. I must admit I’m eagerly looking forward to this much like a new astronaut looks forward to his first space flight, nervous excitement I guess would summarize it. Along with this I’m also a…
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A journey…
As I delve deeper and deeper into “Scrum” and read more and more blogs / papers on the subject I keep fixating on the same question… “What does it mean to be a ‘ScrumMaster’?”. Yes, I know there are the standard “definitions” of it but I think it’s more than that. Personally I equate it…
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Affinity Estimation
“Affinity Estimating is a technique many teams use to quickly and easily estimate (in Story Points) a large number of user stories. This is a great technique if you’re just starting a project and have a backlog that hasn’t been estimated yet.” I remember this topic came up during the ScrumMaster course and I found…
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Impediment
Impediment: That which impedes or hinders progress, motion, activity, or effect. I’ve been thinking about the negative context “impediments” are sometimes set in, I don’t think impediments are negative at all, in fact quite the opposite, they are the pointers that lead you on the path of improvement, but it all depends on how you…
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Talking to non-agile people…
As much as I know (or think I know) about Scrum I still find it difficult some times to communicate to non-agile (waterfall) people that are resistant to change and passionate about their point of view. An interesting article I found clarifies this a bit for me, specifically how to communicate with project managers. The…
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What does it mean to you?
I thought today on the importance of certain words in an organization, like when people say “We’re DONE” what do they mean? When they say “This project was a SUCCESS”, what exactly do they mean by “success”? These are important “words” or phrases that any company must define clearly for it to run effectively. Along…
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Epiphany…
Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. I’ve always struggled with accepting the concept of estimating using story points and NOT effort hours. I could never get my mind around the concept and yes, I’ve…
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Next Sprint…
A new sprint has started, with a better duration (30 days, as recommended) and with proper resource allocation. We did Sprint Planning I today and the team has committed (on their own) to a Sprint Backlog that they feel they can accomplish. Had good Product Owner involvement again which seemed to help alot. Sprint Planning…
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Thoughts on the Sprint…
After completing the first sprint since the training I feel I need to have sort of retrospective for myself on how I handled it. What I did well Always difficult to toot your own horn, but here goes: I believe I explained the process reasonably well to anyone that asked. The (improvised) Scrum Board I…