Scrum is not some newfangled, flash-in-the pan methodology for software development (it isn’t a methodology at all, but that is off-topic for this blog). Scrum is a very small part of a greater movement in the business world, and perhaps the world of organizations in general.
Scrum: its place in the world
When is Scrum not Scrum?
Momentum and Stickiness
Those who know me know that I love analogies. Whenever I try to explain what it is I do or train new employees, I seem to always rely on analogies.
When we consult our customers on Scrum transformations, we are often quizzed about the stickiness of the transformation as a means to justify the ROI of an internal budget approval process.
Is the Product Owner on the Scrum Team?
There's still some confusion out there about whether the Product Owner is a member of the Scrum Team. Rather than pile on the confusion, please stick to Ken Schwaber's terms: "Scrum Development Team" for the subset of the team that excludes the Product Owner, and "Scrum Team" for the dev team + ScrumMaster + Product Owner. These are defined by _The Enterprise and Scrum_ (Schwaber 2007).
Estimate by Proxy? Not in Scrum.
Estimation is one of the topics I receive the most questions on from Scrum professionals of all experience levels. It's such a popular topic that all of our trainers have written blog posts on our website about estimation topics including discussions of actuals vs.
PO is a Person and a Role
PO is a Person and a Role
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Product Owner and people are getting quite heated about it. Here's my take on it.
The Basics on Creating Organizational Definitions of DONEness
(I'll add to this post more in the near future, but I wanted to get it started based on an email I answered for a student of mine.)
As for creating a definition of DONEness, my recommendations would be as follows:
1. Get as many different examples as you can find of DONEness definitions. The more material you have, the more complete your first version can be.
The Value of Games: Ingraining the Intangible in an Audience
On Thursday, September 11th, I had the pleasure of speaking to an audience of around 75 PMPs at the Silicon Valley Chapter of PMI (http://www.pmisv.org/). Anup Deshpande was kind enough to invite me. As it turned out, I was greeted by a great audience with so many questions that we didn't get to the Ball Point Game I had planned. That might not seem like a big deal.
Make-up Stories
Imagine our Product Owner says: "I want this feature by tomorrow and I don't care if you've got to hack it in. If we don't deliver it tomorrow, it will cost us millions of dollars!!" What do we do?
Release Sprint
Imagine you are at the Sprint Review and the Sales Manager says, "That looks good! I can sell the heck out of that. Ship that puppy!" Now what? What do you need to do to get the system shipped, and how and when will you do it?
