I’ve recently been working with a number of scrum teams, across a few different organisations, and I’ve started to notice a bit of a trend with regards to agile practices dropping by the wayside. Now, this might be a sweeping generalisation, but I’m noticing something of a correlation between Scrum teams who are struggling, and […]
I want a number, a metric, that tells me how productive our teams are” challenged my former Head of IT, some years ago. Certainly, it’s a reasonable request to ask how productive a team (or a whole system) is. But first let’s look at the why behind the question. Why do we measure productivity? […]
We’re in a retrospective. This was after a major event, so we discussed a few of the things that have gone awry, like delayed integration with other teams, unfinished stories, and then how we’re going to fix them. All in all, a good open discussion. And then, as we’re getting ready to close the session, one […]
Thought Exercise One Let’s say for the moment that I am the CIO of a mid-sized company. I have a team of 100 or so people building software. Let’s also say that those 100 people are largely dedicated to 10-15 smaller products, there are few dependencies between those products, and we are currently using traditional […]
An agile team that finds its groove is a precious thing. A group of smart diverse people, passionate about their shared purpose, openly collaborating and continually experimenting can do amazing things. They don’t need managing in the traditional sense so what can leaders/managers who work with these teams do to help them? Don’t Tell, Ask […]
While surfing a thread about a potential job change in Reddit’s /r/cscareerquestions (DISCLOSURE: I’m a mod), I read the following comment: "There is no such thing as ruining a career by switching jobs too often" At the time this was the most upvoted comment in the thread, which troubled me because it is rather poor […]
Have you ever been to a Daily Scrum meeting that took more than 15 minutes? Maybe even 20-30 minutes or longer? Mostly those daily meetings are hated by Developers. They are long and unproductive (I have seen "stand-ups" which took more than one hour). Assuming that people’s daily productivity cycle lasts about 5 hours, the […]
Early in my career, I noticed the project managers in my company drove nicer cars than we programmers did. (This was back before companies had learned to fully value their technical staff.) After a few years of noticing those nicer cars, I asked my boss what I needed to do to become a project manager. […]
Learn more about transforming people, process and culture with the Real Agility ProgramAfter a recent large organizational change that resulted in a number of new teams formed, a product owner (PO) approached me looking for some help. He said, “I don’t think my new Scrum Master is doing their job and I’m now carrying the […]
In this Ask A Dev, DevOps engineer Michael Murad explains what DevOps is and how it erases the barrier between operations and development to make companies more efficient through continuous delivery. He starts by telling us how DevOps connects development, quality assurance, and technical operations to make the Software Development Lifecycle run like "well-oiled machinery." […]