Category: Agile
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It’s about people…
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” I’ve been thinking recently on the importance of people in this whole agile “thing” (for lack of a better word). I think people lose focus of the actual PEOPLE in a team and still focus on them as resources (some nice baggage from our waterfall days). Agile pushes…
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A new challenge…
Today is my 3rd day as an official ScrumMaster. Although the first 2 days were, well, daunting at best, today there seems to be a bit more clarity. The challenges here are similar, but still different. Resistance to adoption is coming from a different place this time. The teams seem to want to do Scrum…
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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…