The long awaited videos from South Africa’s first Scrum Day are now finally available.

We have created a channel on Vimeo which you can find here.

Should you have any other questions, please email scrumday@scrum.org.za

I wanted to jump up and down when I read it. It speaks to me about why I hate the whole idea of an electronic board.

He also links to Xavier Quesada Allue’s blog, which echoes this practical approach to scrum and teams. I absolutely love his “Elements of taskboard design” which has real practical tips on what you can do to make your task board more effective. And he made me aware of “Super Sticky Post It’s“.

Now I’m off to convince Loren, Mistress of Stationery, to order us some of those. Sometimes the best tools are already out there.

Scrum(tm) – a 3M product

I found Jeff Patton’s ‘Story Map‘ to be a useful discussion on an alternative to the 1-dimensional product backlog.

It was also the basis of one of the Open Spaces sessions at the recent Orlando gathering. This is definitely not a vanilla scrum technique, so not suggested for beginners. Jeff’s presentation explicitly states he believes it to be a ‘Ha’ technique (in the Shu-Ha-Ri schema).

One for the scrum masters among the readers: the Scrum Alliance has a run down of a discussion on the ‘Top 10 Organisational Impediments‘. Which will also give you a chance to check out the zooty new Scrum Alliance website. There is lots of content from the Orlando Gathering there as well.

The hot topic at the moment in the scrum community is all about the role of certification and testing. Mishkin Berteig‘s view of the beta test can be found here. I’d be curious to hear in the comments what people’s view of the test are.

Till next time

Imesh Soni has a good article up at Scrum Alliance, which could probably be called the ’9 Habit of highly Ineffective Scrums’ or something. It describes which tricks are used in traditional waterfall organisations and need to be changed for scrum teams.

From Ukrainian Agile discussion group comes this paper on how to use LEGO(tm) to simulate a scrum. Useful in showing people how the various principles and practices fit together.

For our Product Owners in the audience, Jack Milunsky has a good top 10 list of the things which a PO are supposed to be doing.

From Jeff Atwood (who is apparently a CSM) a really good article about team dynamics and the importance of eliminating the ‘bad apples’. As a scrum master it’s critical that your identify the impediments a team member may be imposing on the team.

For the techies, a good article on how to handle intermittence when using test driven development.

And from Ron Jeffries one on the necessity of refactoring. Ron’s salient point is that if you’re practising agile development your design must evolve. Under those circumstances refactoring is a ‘law of nature’.

Jurgen Appelo has published an excellent scrum presentation that you can find on his blog. Its a really good one for people not that familar with scrum and covers the history, practices and discussion on some of the usual questions.

Lastly, from the ever reliable InfoQ comes a good discussion about the pros and cons of physical information radiators. I love my Big Visible Charts; hiding things in a web application just don’t seem like a good idea, but go read the article to hear from more than one viewpoint.

Till next week.

I recently found an oldy-but-goody on running stand ups: It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings. This is a case of getting the basics right, and Jason Yip of ThoughtWorks has some really good tips. My favourite; if your team is engaging in the ‘Storytelling’ anti-pattern (or smell), make the person speaking do so while standing on one leg.

Jeff Sutherland talks a bit about how organisational change (like scrum adoption) happens. To add to this point have a look at an older article from Mike Vizdos. It contains the rather startling statistic from Ken Schwaber that about 75% of teams fail to successfully implement scrum.

The core of why that is, can probably be down to the reasons presented in this article from Alistair Cockburn. And if you’re not sure, he has a great top 10 list of how to know if you’re not doing agile.

On a less gloomy note: you can find a myriad of cool scrum games at Tasty Cupcakes.

For those with an interest in the debate about whether Scrum is Lean, Dave West’s slightly sensationalist article can be found here. Be sure to check out the debate in the comments.

And lastly, Tom Perry has an interesting idea; using the 360 degree feedback format as preparation for your sprint retrospective. This does move the discussion in the retrospective from a team-based improvement to more personal one, and should be used with caution.

Till next week.

Jurgen Appelo’s post on how scrum uses peer pressure in a positive way can be found here.
I enjoy his writing and he uses a cool technique for creating a scrum team, by getting them to cook dinner for him. I like it ‘cos I worked as a chef for a while and having everyone working together to produce a meal for several people at the same time is a good way to teach people how to self-organise. Plus you get free food out of it

There’s a good article by Clinton Keith here about the factors influencing your sprint length.

Mike Cohn clarified the ‘Release Backlog’ concept and why it really isn’t a good idea. He draws attention to the use of velocity as a predictor of the shipping date.

He has another good article up about story points. Many teams struggle with the move from time based estimates to story points. I think this may help clarify what story points are, given that they are a more abstract measure of effort.

Having to support the software we ship while building new functionality is probably one of the most challenging aspects of implementing scrum. Boris will tell you that the answer is not to write bugs. But if you do, how to handle the support requests while not changing the scope of the sprint or endangering the ability to deliver the commitment? Kelly Walters at ‘All About Agile’ has some good suggestions here.

If you can’t wait till next week for more links, you can also follow me on twitter. Till next week.

Carlo

I am particularly encouraged by the range of people and institutions that are engaging with the Scrum Alliance and embracing Scrum…from XP and Crystal to the PMI!

For more information visit http://www.scrumalliance.org/events/19–orlando-scrum-gathering

First up is Kent Beck’s ‘State of Agile’ presentation.
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/01/Agile-Trends-Kent-Beck
He has some very interesting things to say about the alignment between agile’s values of transparency and how they help business, particularly in our current difficult economic climate.

Mike Cohn posted what amounts to a “Requirements Koan”
http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/?p=77
This challenge was like a brain worm that I kept thinking about for days after. It is intended to get you to think about the fact that all new requirements can be thought of as merely improvements. Or something. Go read the post.

Also, Mike Cohn’s presentation on what scrum is has received a small update and a face lift. You can find it at:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum-a-presentation

Martin Fowler has an interesting piece on the importance of using engineering practises that support agile development
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FlaccidScrum.html
Of particular interest to me was his statement that team’s who do not adopt these practises are risking the reputation of scrum as a whole, but that he’s not worried about it.

Boris Gloger posted a review of the VersionOne software:
http://scrum4you.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/scrum-tools-version-one/

Lastly, if you’re looking for a comprehensive rundown on the tools available for supporting scrum in your organisation, Mike Cohn has started a website at:
http://www.userstories.com/
Coming later in the year will be samples and examples of stories and backlogs.