Scrum and Motivation
As a relatively recent addition to the ScrumMaster ranks, I am finding myself regularly faced with a question related to motivation. Understanding the context of any task is hugely important before a realistic commitment can be agreed upon with th...
Avoid the Pandemic: Save the World with Scrum
Can your Scrum team save the world? Try this team-building exercise with the cooperative board game Pandemic.
Diagnosis: A high-performing team
One of the key responsibilities of the ScrumMaster is providing the necessary leadership to form a gr...
What Does Your Project or Program Play Card Look Like?
On just about any given Saturday or Sunday in the United States, you'll find friends and families enjoying time watching football (or American football, as my European friends call it). Regardless of whether it's the college or pro game, the telev...
The Need to Include Design Topics During Agile Transformation
For effective Scrumming, stories should have the desirable INVEST characteristics: They should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, sized, and testable). We'll assume that the product owner is trained in Scrum and creates clean stories...
The Kanban Sandwich: A Bite-Size Recipe for Agile Work Flows at Scale
If you've been involved in Agile development for the past 10 or 15 years, you may have noticed that certain patterns of Agile application have emerged. The Scrum Patterns repository has captured at least some of them. Like the Design Patterns that...
Testers Working in an Agile Team
Today's tester role is more versatile and calls on a wide range of skills. Now testers have tasks throughout the sprint, and they also program — yes! — as regular programmers. (I don't say as developers, as all participants in the team...
Scrum of Scrums: Running Agile on Large Projects
How to use Agile practices on large projects? There is an idea that Agile only applies to small projects, perhaps for the simplest of the routines, events, and artifacts of the frameworks.
The fears are valid. We can mention several issues that w...