Improve your software delivery with these words.

Language is important.  Words, have meaning, lots of meaning.  All too often people throw words around without much thought. In an article by Chris Ward and Leonardo Legorreta, called Beyond Waterfall and Agile Methods: Towards a New Contingency Model for IT Project Management I found this table.  I love it. Let’s try to push our industry to be more fluent in our own language.

Words with specific meaning, used correctly can lend credibility to the rest of the work you do. If you are not careful about your speech, people will eventually begin to believe you don’t know what you are talking about.

The question to ask is “What fits your project best?” Is your project a Waterfall Project? An Incremental, Iterative, adaptive or completely exploratory?   Each type has its own strengths and weaknesses. Each type is appropriate for some work and inappropriate for others.

Use the right words.   Share this with your co-workers.

Why is 7 +-2 the ideal Scrum team size?

Maybe you have heard that the ideal Scrum team size is 7 +-2 but do you really understand why? In this video I SHOW you why it is the rule and the real trouble you can get into if it is larger. Plus what you can do when you have really large teams.

Is agile right for your style?

What Type of Project Manager are you? Is agile a fit for your style of PM?

Some of my frustration with Agile / Waterfall coming out.

Scrum of Scrums Don’t be a Lemming…Part 2

This is a 2 minute update to my last post on Scrum-of-Scrums

Improve your team’s agility in 10 minutes!

Use this new 10 minute exercise to increase your teams knowledge and skills in agility.

The best SHORT description of #agile

…a set of values based on trust and respect for each other and promoting organizational models based on people, collaboration, and building the types of organizational communities in which we would want to work.

via History: The Agile Manifesto.

I’m Just sayn’

I was just reading a post on the Linked In group for the Agile Alliance. Someone was questioning the agile manifesto and that got some seriously heated replies
I wrote my response and ended it with this:

Remember the Agile Manifesto was just something a bunch of guys made up one day, almost ten years ago. Haven’t we learned anything in ten years that might, just might be helpful?

What have you learned that is more useful than what you believed 10 years ago?

Please share in COMMENTS….

Variations on Scrum-of-Scrums

If you have multiple Scrum Teams you need a Scrum of Scrums for cross project communication.In this short 5 minute video I explain variations of the Scrum-of-Scrums I have tried and what my current thinking is about them.

Enterprise Project Management with #AGILE & #SCRUM – 5 PDUs

Check it out!  If you are a traditionally trained Project Manager who is new to Agile, have I got a class for you!

I am an instructor on www.teachstreet.com with my Introduction to Agile for Project Managers class.

Check it out. It is only $95 for 5 PDUs heck you can’t beat that!

Hope you will join me.

======Monday – “Agile from 40,000 feet”
Monday is always a great day to start fresh.
What is agile…Really. Is it Software, is it a technology, is it a religion
Learn how agile differs from your traditional approach to managing projects

Tuesday – “Horses for Courses”
When should you use agile? Why?
Learn how to identify a candidate for agile project management
How to mix agile and traditional waterfall methods in a single project

Wednesday – “Get to the Point”
Agile uses “Points” to do estimation of work
Learn why points are better than hours for estimation
Learn the rules of Planning Poker.
Lessons from the frontlines – What DOESN’T work in an enterprise

Thursday – “Catch and Release”
Agile Project PLANNING.
Defining a release plan
Elements of an agile release plan
Don’t forget…Things you should remember in planning an agile project

Friday – Final Q&A and Suggested topics
During the course I will be gathering topics of specific interest from the class
for this last day of custom designed training.

This class is worth 5 PDUs with the Project Management Institute. Details will be provided at the last class on how to record your PDUs with PMI.

Sprint Review: Emotional Time-line Diagram

If you don’t use the Emotional Timeline Diagramming technique in your Sprint Reviews you should. In this video I describe the technique and my experience using it last week.