Benjamin Zander observed that “the conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound”. This has implications for all leaders, including those in software development.
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Tag Archives: feel
Scrum Product Owner: Scrum’s Uber-Pig
I couldn’t help it, I had to draw a parallel between Scrum and Animal Farm. The Final Commandment given by the pigs in the Animal Farm is “All animals are equal, but some animals [the pigs] are more equal than others“. And in Scrum the Uber-Pig is the Product Owner.
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Example of Day to Day Governance on an Agile Programme
You’d think I couldn’t win. Senior corporate managers are nervous that I am doing unconventional agile stuff, without those reassuring Gantt charts or status reports and hardly any formal minutes. Agilists are horrified that I advocate Agile Governance.
This conflict isn’t impossible it is just one of many places where I can demonstrate that Agile practices aid traditional processes/goals. In this case programme/project governance. I start from the position that governance is not contrary to Agile, it is built in. Rather than less governance my Agile programme actually has more governance than is the norm and is is safer as a consequence. Given this position is fairly controversial I thought I’d explain how I go about governance at the moment. I’ll give you a clue – there is a lot of talking.
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Does a Scrum Team need a Project Manager?
I’ve said not to bother project managing a team of one. But what about a bigger team? What about a Scrum team?
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Another kicking from stakeholders? Not when dispassionate and positive
“Well, we just got another kicking”. A group of us, representing technology, had just attended the regular programme board meeting with the business types. In the debrief afterwards the technology folk around me were despondent. In fact they were despondent every month after this meeting. They genuinely felt kicked. But I didn’t. I never did. It was almost like I experienced a completely different meeting to that experienced by my colleagues.
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Why I don’t hire Scrum Masters
I don’t hire Scrum Masters. I don’t hire Scrum Masters because the role is the wrong shape to fit into my team, with the wrong set of responsibilities, and the people who might apply have insufficient qualifications for the job I need done.
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Business Representative or Product Manager. Who is the Product Owner?
I’m often in the situation where I’ve got both business representatives and product managers in my programme team. The big question is: who is the Product Owner?
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Agile Status Report for Executives: Best, Worst, Throughput
My programme’s Sponsoring Group asked me to send a weekly status report. This was to compensate for the fact they were at a remote site and hence couldn’t see the walls of our informative workspace. They were paying the bills so who was I to argue.
Luckily they don’t want a lot of detail. They want to know three things:
- Throughput
- Best thing this week
- Worst thing this week
Talent not practice: The myth of the 10,000 hours
Common wisdom, and self help books, says that anyone who completes 10,000 hours (10 years) in their chosen discipline will excel. This is part of the rationale for Code Kata and Coding Dojos from the Software Craftsmanship movement. But the 10 years equals expert formula isn’t true.
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Six Things To Do When Agile Newbies Join Your Team
So you are up and running with Lean-Agile but your team is still growing or there is some churn in the team. Either way new people arrive, often without an effective Lean-Agile background. What to do?
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