david.segonds.org » Project Management

Things to think about before and after a daily stand-up meeting

David — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:28:29 +0000

Daily stand-up meetings are at the core of the Scrum process. They help synchronize the team and quickly escalate impediments. Regardless if you have been participating in those meetings for years or you are just starting today, Mike Griffiths just published two useful posts to help us get more out of this critical activity:

Anchoring Effect

David — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:23:29 +0000

According to wikipedia:

Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

This is a dangerous bias that can bite you when you are estimating tasks or stories in an Agile environment. I am even wondering if this plays a role when you are poker planning, and how much this influences your decisions from the get go.

Anyway, this article goes into detailing the anchoring effect and the “You are not so smart” blog is providing insights on common human behavior that plays an important role in software development.

While the phenomenon is well-known, I am wondering what a team can do about it. How can you overcome its nefarious effect and also how do you measure its effect in the long run.

[via You are not so smart]

Original photo by Plbmak

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A Pattern for Using Scrum and Kanban

David — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:17:11 +0000

For a while now, I have wondered how you can combine Scrum and Kanban. Scrum is a good lightweight method that, if applied properly, can improve productivity, and more importantly, transparency for all stakeholders. On the other hand, Kanban seduced me for its simplicity and its ability to streamline your development. However, I never read anything about combining the two and most articles I have read so far seems to portray those two methodologies as oil and water.

This article take a different approach and shows how a well lubricated and performing Scrum team can benefit from Kanban.

This is food for thought.

[via AvailAgility]

Adapting Steven Covey’s concept to retrospectives

David — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:16:17 +0000

In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey describes the concept of circles of control, influence, and concern. Succinctly, this concept states that you should only focus on the few things you can control and influence, and not on the many for which you are powerless.

This article describe an innovative retrospective process that one can use to help focus a Scrum team on the items they can control or influence.

This is a nice idea.

[via Partnership & Possibilities]

In your organization, are the right people on the bus?

Agile Anti-Patterns

David — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:40:41 +0000

I believe that Agile is a great tool to help development teams achieve more, improve, and reach their next level in effectiveness, productivity, or creativity. However, like any tool, it can be misused or misapplied. You can shoot yourself in the foot if you are not applying a certain level of discipline or hygiene.

Mike Griffiths posted a short and sweet article on this subject that he entitled Agile anti-patterns. He classifies those anti-patterns as follow:

Agile as a silver bullet
Agile as an excuse for no discipline
Agile without explanation
Shallow Feedback

If You Want Something Done, Practice Your Patience

David — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:30:56 +0000

As a manager you’ve been taught, either by your peers, or through hard knocks, to avoid micromanaging your teams. You quickly learn that micromanagement only alienate people.

Anyway, I have noticed that delegation appears to be a difficult concept for inexperienced managers that I had the opportunity to mentor. Delegation does not come naturally. Newly appointed supervisors often think “If you want something done, do it yourself.”

Delegation of authority is an investment and you need patience and time to see your investment come to fruition. It may take a few weeks, a few months, or a year but your patience will be rewarded in the end.

This is the theme of Jurgen Appelo’s humorous article.

[via NOOP.NL]

Original photo by mrsmas and published under SXC license.

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Patterns and Practices for Distributed Teams

David — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:30:23 +0000

If you are working with teams distributed across multiple timezones, you know how difficult it can be to operate efficiently at times. Over the years, you surely have experimented and tried out different patterns or processes that work in your context.

I have been working for ten years with teams that were in timezones seven to thirteen hours away from my own and we have experimented quite a bit. This is fun and frustrating at the same time.

J.D. Meiers exposes some patterns and practices that will work with distributed teams. I have found that those patterns are not appropriate in every circumstances but they are an excellent summary that will prevent you from reinventing the wheel

[via J.D. Meier's Blog]

Original photo by extranoise and published under an Creative Commons Attribution License

Introduction to Lean Manufacturing [Video]

David — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:08:27 +0000

Gemba Academy has a good video introducing Lean Manufacturing

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdHGTCXcJQU

Agile vs. Waterfall: A Tale of Two Teams

Self Improvement: There Is No End State When Transitioning to Agile

David — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:35:10 +0000

I am a strong believer in Self Improvement, constant learning, and continuous improvement. As such I really enjoyed this article from Mike Cohn where he describes how Agile adoption is process with no end state that needs to be tailored to your organization needs.

[via Mike Cohn's Blog]

Organizational issues that get in the way of effective project delivery

David — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:10:37 +0000

When things go wrong and projects do not get delivered on time, on schedule, and on budget, it is easy to blame the team or the team lead. However, one should not forget that the organization as a whole can play a role in delaying projects. Ron Ronsenhead lists in his article some Organizational Issues preventing effective project delivery.

[via Ron Rosenhead]

Anchoring Effect

Kanban – The Next Step in the Agile Evolution?

David — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:14:52 +0000

I am interested in everything that can help improve my teams’ productivity and consequently helps us provide better value to our customers. As such, I have started reading about Kanban, a project management methodology that appears to “compete” with Scrum. Scrum is the methodology that I am currently using.

Scrum is an iterative method that provides incremental value to stakeholders at the end of each iteration. The product owner provides requirements at the beginning of each iteration. During the iteration, the team designs, implements, tests, documents, debugs new features based on those requirements. At the end of the iteration, the team demonstrates the new features to the product owner who accept or reject them.

Kanban on the other hand, is not an iterative process. The product owner provides ranked list of requirements. The team pulls requirements from top of the list one at a time. The team designs, implements, tests, documents, debugs new features based on those requirements. The product owner review the new features as soon as they are produced.

Project Management Hut presents an article describing Kanban as the next step in Agile Evolution.

[via The Project Management Hut]

Agile vs. Waterfall: A Tale of Two Teams

David — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:36:08 +0000

We are using Agile methodologies at work and I was looking for ways to explain the fundamental differences between those two development methodologies. It turns out that this video is pretty good at doing just this. Enjoy… www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDDO3ob-4ZY Related posts: Agile Anti-Patterns A Pattern for Using Scrum and Kanban On the road to Competence Related posts: