One Way to Handle Bugs and Production Support in Scrum

Dear ScrumCrazy readers, I need your help. I’m working on a Scrum strategy for handling bugs and production support on a Scrum team. This is the first draft of the chart below. I already have a couple of changes I would like to make, so I’d appreciate it if anyone could provide feedback on the [...]

Steve Denning – Rattling the Cages of Command and Control Managers on Forbes.com

Are any of you following Denning’s recent articles on Forbes?  He is “killing it” for Agile. I especially like the bottom link… http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/04/29/scrum-is-a-major-management-discovery/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/09/the-best-kept-management-secret-on-the-planet-agile/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/11/why-cant-the-c-suite-grasp-agile-management/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/17/the-case-against-agile-ten-perennial-management-objections/ Anyone have opinions on Steve’s work?  I’m not familiar with it other than passing references to his book.

Lee Henson is the Brad Pitt of Scrum Trainers

@AgileDad, Lee Henson, is the Brad Pitt of Scrum Trainers You know the guy. He’s engaging, he’s deep, and when he talks to you — you feel like you’re the only one in the room. You feel like he “gets you.” Some have accused a certain former President of having this ability. You know this [...]

The Bradley Agile Maturity Model

Through my experiences in coaching teams on Agile and Scrum, I have come to categorize their maturity level into the rough categories below. I almost hesitate to call this an “Agile Maturity Model” because so many of the levels do not reflect strong Agile maturity. If it were up to me, the maturity model would [...]

Tips for Coaching Managers who are Playing a Scrum Role

I often come across Organizational Constraints that involve a Manager playing a Scrum role. Strictly speaking, this a violation of Scrum because no one, not even the Scrum Master, can tell the Development Team how to accomplish their work, and there are no titles on Development teams. Like all organizational constraints, it’s important to mitigate [...]

Best Practice – Minimize Manager input in Retrospectives

One of Scrum’s main tenants is about self organization. Self organization is difficult enough to achieve on its own, especially with a new Scrum team or a team who has members who are new to each other on it. In the context of this article, when I say “Manager”, I mean someone who has a [...]

I Mostly Hate Software for Managing Scrum Teams

Update February, 2012: I’m currently seeking my next engagement as a Scrum Coach or ScrumMaster, so please contact me (You can use the “About” tab above) if you know of an opportunity. I often get asked to evaluate a particular Scrum tool or to compare the relatively value of one to another. To be honest, [...]

Great Blog Post Summarizing Lisa Crispin’s “Secrets of Successful Test Automation”

A person I know and greatly respect on the subject of “Agile testing”(Lisa Crispin) gave a presentation last night at Agile Denver. Another person I know and greatly respect on the subject of Agile and Scrum(Brad Swanson) summarized her “Secrets of Successful Test Automation” on his blog. It’s short and sweet: http://properosolutions.com/2011/10/the-secrets-of-successful-test-automation/ Lisa, the original [...]

Best Practice – Make Retrospective Action Items Highly Visible

Here is how I define a Best Practice: Best Practice -a practice that is good in almost all contexts and almost all team situations. more details… Many teams talk a good game on making changes to their development process, but fewer actually make those changes. Therefore, it is a Scrum Best Practice to make Retrospective [...]

When Not to Use Scrum

Don’t get me wrong, people! I am CRAZY about Scrum. Just ask my wife(she gets sick of hearing about it sometimes)! I’m probably the biggest Scrum fan on the planet! However, I’ve encountered certain situations where it doesn’t seem like Scrum works well. They all pretty much boil down to two generic cases: Applying Scrum [...]