We hear quite a bit that Scrum teams "need" full time ScrumMasters, but rarely do we see teams that get them. Why? Several reasons, but the biggest one is usually money. Why should a company pay for someone to keep a team healthy?
The Fourth Question in the Daily Scrum / Standup
Lets say you are on a team that is both newly formed and new to practicing agile. Your daily standup meetings appear to be going well and you are looking forward to your teams first demo. The big day comes, you get in front of the customer, and...
Using Team Consultants to Optimize Your Organization
Data tells us that the best team sizes are between five and nine people, all of whom are fully dedicated to a project for the duration of the project, and who work together in a cross-functional way to deliver working software at the end of every...
Win a Copy of The Scrum Field Guide
The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year is now shipping (link to Amazon)! Throughout the month of April I will be giving away a signed copy of the book to four readers of this blog.
Winning is easy. Just enter a comment on...
Free Chapters from The Scrum Field Guide
Addison Wesley informed me that theyve made a chapters available from my upcoming book, The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year. It includes the forwards by Jeff Sutherland and Jim Highsmith as well as Chapter 27, Documentation...
When the Team Becomes the Product Owner
Jim was working as the business manager inside the company. He had years of experience and was a few years from retiring. Jim was working on a project with Michelle and he had been voluntold (told he would volunteer) that he was the teams product...
How does Scrum Help the Individual?
People often ask why they should work on a Scrum team if their companies base rewards on individual efforts. This raises the question, how does Scrum help the individual?
Microsoft patterns & practices Team Space
Many people ask me about team spaces and how to set them up. Not long ago, colleagues Ade Miller and Ajoy Krishnamoorthy did a walkthrough of the Microsoft patterns & practices space - it is built around agile teams. When watching this video,...
Scrum for Managers
I am always amazed when I ask people what they think the job of a manager is. I get answers like “to tell people what to do” to “stay out of the way” to “do my performance review” to “lead”.
The last one is always of interest to me. Do companies hire managers or do they hire leaders?
A Messed Up Interview Question
This is an old interview question I used to give people at Microsoft. Think you can figure it out?
