Technical Debt Hits The Bottom Line at EBay
Remember ten years ago, when online shopping brought “EBay” to mind? When I moved to downtown Seattle in 2001, I sold a barely-used sports car on EBay. A year later I bought a motorcycle on EBay....
View ArticleThe Backlog Refinement Meeting (or Backlog Grooming)
The Backlog Refinement Meeting is also called Product Backlog Grooming, Backlog Estimation, and even Story Time. Ken Schwaber didn’t give it an official name in the original Scrum books but he did say...
View ArticleDo Internal Departments Delight Their Internal Customers?
At the Seattle Scrum Gathering I heard Steve Denning say that companies who don’t delight their customers won’t survive the decade. There’s no longer only three TV channels to choose from; the “You...
View ArticleFree Web Based Training: Introduction To Scrum, with quiz
We’re beta-testing a web based training module to help people prepare for CSM classes, and counteract misconceptions spread by certain popular but uninformed YouTube videos. The early feedback has been...
View ArticleThe Team That Said No to KPIs
If you’ve been following the work of behavioral economists and authors such as Dan Pink, or you’ve read my article What Your HR Department Doesn’t Know About Scrum, you already know that truely Agile...
View ArticleHow Did Scrum Become a Straitjacket?
The ideas behind Agile (before it was a buzzword) largely arose from practitioners looking to eliminate painful or silly management practices between them and their craft. When I first did Scrum, it...
View Article15 Ways to Split an Epic, a Team Exercise
Your Scrum Team has been hired by a physical fitness expert to develop a mobile device application to prescribe daily personalized exercise routines and diets for a wide range of people. The app should...
View ArticleEvery Sprint Has A Mix of Activities
Sprints are not purely for construction. In a broad sense, producing a little bit of product is a goal of every Sprint. But not the *narrow* sense of production or construction people are traditionally...
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Case Study of a Difficult Federal Government Scrum Project: FBI Sentinel
According to today’s Wall Street Journal (“FBI Goes Digital, After Delays“), the FBI’s Sentinel system is finally ready for agents to use, replacing manual processes and older electronic case...
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How Can I Explain To A Coworker That He Writes Bad Code ?
How can I explain to a coworker that he writes bad code? I just read a discussion of this question on a popular technical discussion site and I was disappointed by the answers. Most of the answers...
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敏捷嘉年华, 2013 Scrum Gathering in China (Scrum 中国聚会)
I had the privilege of participating in this month’s China Scrum Gathering, called 敏捷嘉年华, which means Agile Carnival! While this was designated a “regional” gathering, I saw at least 300 people at the...
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Why Take A 3-Day Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Class?
The Certified Scrum Master (CSM) class I’ve usually offered is an interactive cartoon e-learning series (Scrum Training Series completed before attendance) + two days of team lab activities. It gets...
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