Kim Daubney asked “What to do when stand ups leave you none the wiser”? What you do really depends on why you are “none the wiser”. Do you have a knowledge gap or is the wrong information being shared?
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Tag Archives: monitoring and control
RAG status – Red is a call for help
A RAG status uses the colour of traffic lights (Red, Amber, Green) to signal project status. This is a pretty standard tool in the project manager’s tool kit but some folk don’t think RAG is helpful in an Agile context. Personally I use RAG status for risks and issues and have redefined what they mean. In my scheme Red becomes a call for help.
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Headphones cut off vital information
Headphones. I hate them. If I wore headphones at work I would be cut off from a lot of vital information about what is really going. It would hamper Management on the Ground. So I never wear them.
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What to do when Estimates go up a lot
You start the Sprint confidently but the burn down chart starts going up. Things are a lot harder than expected! Your velocity is lower than you expected. What to do?
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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
Corporate control = Project brakes
In general I believe brakes let you go faster. But what if the brakes are locked on? Suddenly you’re not going anywhere. And that is what happens when a project comes under excessive corporate control. The project screeches to a halt.
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Lean-Agile is micromanagement but not in an excessive way
Is Lean-Agile micromanagement? Mike Cohn says “yes” but Mike’s use of the term excludes the “excessive” aspect of the conventional definition. An attention to detail is a good thing, making for better management, and Lean-Agile has the tools to make the detail transparent. Excessive attention to detail leads to the Fallacy of Control and horror – I don’t see this in Lean-Agile teams.
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Observing, eavesdropping and overhearing – essential tools for a software development leader
I believe in Management on the Ground and what better way to be on the ground than to be sitting with the team in an open plan office. By simply observing, eavesdropping and overhearing I know what is going on and I also get early warning when I have to intervene.
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I’m Impatient with the Pseudo-action Deceptions
I like to finish things. Get “Done”. Some might say I’m impatient to finish things. But not everybody is like that. Many people suffer from the various Pseudo-action Deceptions, i.e. thinking rather than doing.
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Developers don’t have time for code reviews and unit tests
The ticket moves to “Dev Done” but there are no unit tests and the code hasn’t been reviewed. When challenged the developer says “That’s because I don’t have time for that stuff”. If I hear that I want to know why they feel they don’t have time, then I give them the time.
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