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Meetings in a Hurry Are Not Effective Ones
The Importance of Timeboxing in Scrum
The timeboxing is a fundamental technique for many Scrum activities. There is often a misunderstanding that meetings should be fast, leading facilitators to rush participants to finish within the timebox. This haste results in poorly discussed problems and many uninformed decisions.
Read MoreThe Hacker Way
A few days ago, Paweł Wrzeszcz sent me Erik Meijer’s talk “One Hacker Way” (watch here) from the GOTO Conference in Copenhagen. It is a very provocative talk, which is great. It questions the Scrum method and challenges the status quo in Agile. Given that Scrum is a dominant framework in software development, a critical view is healthy, especially as Agile has become a significant business machine over the past 20 years. When implementing Agile at Scale, core ideas can easily become distorted. (Check out Dave Thomas’ “Agile is Dead” talk here).
Read MoreConferences Time
Autumn is usually a busy time full of conferences, and this year is no different. After a few interesting events like Devoxx Poland in Cracow, Codepot and Agile by Example in Warsaw, it’s now time for new experiences.
Read MoreAgile Prague 2014 Notes
It’s been almost a week since Agile Prague finished. It was a great time of interesting discussions and meetings. I had the privilege to talk with Linda Rising about patterns, their history, and current state (still under development). She also gave wonderful talks about the Agile mindset and trust.
Read MoreJDD, Warsjawa, Agile Prague and Cambridge Agile Conferences
Vacation time is over, and it’s time to get back to hard work :)
Read MoreTime for Non-Violent Rebel
The Deficit of Humanity in Agile Practice
Agile thinking has been with us for several years. There is a lot of humanity behind Agile thinking, and this is what is great about it. But Agile, like every idea, is just that—an idea. It is not easily applicable in life and often distorted to be convenient, though not necessarily useful. People focus on practices and lose the spirit of the idea. Agile is just an example. All in all, the problem is the deficit of humanity in the business context.
Read MoreSimple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic Systems, in Other Words Cynefin. And How Does It Relate to Software Development?
Intro
You might have already come across terms such as complex systems, complicated systems, or complex adaptive systems; especially, if you have read Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo or heard about Ken Schwaber’s ideas about the applicability of Scrum. It might sound intriguing, but finding logic in it is difficult without some background theory. This is the point at which Dave Snowden’s Cynefin concept comes in handy. This concept is based on complex systems theory, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and, last but not least, cognitive psychology.
Read MoreSelf-Organization - A Myth?
The entire Agile community (and not just Agile) loudly discusses organization. I have the impression that for some time, we’ve been trying to find the holy grail that will allow us to answer the question: “How to manage without managing?”. This time, I’ll play the devil’s advocate.
Read MoreWhy I Hate These Standups...
Why I Hate These Standups…
I often hear it… that they are a waste of time, just distractions from work, adding no real value…
Read MoreMaster... Master...
The Role of the Scrum Master
In the real world, there are many variations of this role. Sometimes it’s a person from the team, sometimes a manager, sometimes someone from outside the team, sometimes a specialist in being a Scrum Master, and I’ve even seen it as a rotating role within the team. So, who is it really? What’s the purpose?
Read MoreTrust in the Team
The Importance of Trust in Agile Methodologies
One of the main values of agile methodologies is trust. However, it is not always clear what this means.
Read MoreWhy Agile Fails
Introduction
Implementing a methodology from the Agile family is not at all easy. The problem usually lies in management, who upon superficially understanding what it’s all about, perceive the new method as a promise that from now on, everything will magically work better. It doesn’t matter if we have subpar team members and adhere to the principle that “any specialist can be replaced by a finite number of students.” It doesn’t matter if there’s complete disregard for knowledge management and skill development in the team because there’s never time for that. It doesn’t matter if people working on projects are shuffled between projects—after all, it’s about interdisciplinarity, and everyone should know everything.
Read MoreClients Want to Be Agile...
Clients Want to Be Agile…
One of the recent meetings involved establishing (by me, MS) a way to collaborate with a client (details intentionally slightly modified or omitted, though based on a real case). The client (K) said:
Read MoreMeeting Deadlines at All Costs is a Mistake!
The Necessity of Deadlines
Deadlines are necessary. Whether you work in Scrum (Agile) or a waterfall-like methodology, one thing is certain: without deadlines, there is no motivation. According to Parkinson’s Law (no relation to the disease), deadlines are essential.
Read MoreA Few New Concepts - Architectonic Mantra, Design Retrospective, Shared Context, Natural Order of Refactoring
Recently, several named concepts have evolved in my mind, or maybe I just understood them well. Here are a few notes that I consider an alpha draft ;-)
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