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Book Excerpt: Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum

This is a book excerpt from Mike Cohn's new book "Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum". This article describes the primary adjustments individuals must make as they transition from traditional roles to Scrum. The focus is on how these roles change, rather than on a thorough description of each role.

Mike Cohn
on Jan 12, 2010
Agile Teamwork: The Leadership - Self-management Dilemma

Self-managed teams are unstable and are successful when the ‘Leadership – Self-Management’ dilemma is understood and dealt with. Too much central control destroys agility, inhibits creativity and resists change. Too much self-management leads to chaos and anarchy and destroys a team. A successful Agile Team operates as far along self-management as it can, without tipping over into chaos.

Rowan McCann
on Jan 05, 2010
Scrum And Strategy

If Scrum is all about short term, how then do the strategy folks work in such an ecosystem? More importantly, how does it help business leaders make and live up to important commitments? Good questions, but there aren’t easy enough answers. Doesn’t all this make strategy and Scrum look like the two poles of a magnet, or even further – the two extremes of the planet?

Mukund Srinivasan
on Dec 15, 2009
How Product Management Must Change to Enable the Agile Enterprise

When development teams adopt agile, product management is often caught off guard by the amount of work added to their already overflowing plate. Agile calls for new skills, and traditional staffing models do not typically accommodate the new product owner role. Given that most product managers are overworked, how can they manage these new activities to derive more value?

Catherine Connor
on Nov 30, 2009
Burndown Analysis for Managing Productivity & Schedules

Managing the productivity and the schedules on a project is always a big challenge due to the complexities involved in taking the decisions fast. We attempt to use the “Burndown” information to address this issue. We show how a burndown chart comes in handy when a Project team is faced with the tough questions on the issues pertaining to Schedule, Resource Management and Productivity.

Bharadwaj Velamakanni Ramanathan Sathianarayanan
on Sep 15, 2009
Making Scrum Stick: Overcoming Anxiety And Fear

While a team can grab on to something as simple and effective as Scrum quickly, the associated changes can cause worries. There are common issues that occur when adopting Scrum as well as nuances that will almost inevitably crop up. By being aware of these issues you can be prepared for them or, perhaps, not feel too bad that you are experiencing them yourself – they are common.

Geoff Watts
on Aug 27, 2009
The Current Direction of Agile

This article focuses on some of the recent trends within the Agile community by briefly describing some alternatives to today’s well known Agile processes. Particularly focusing on estimation, forecasting deliverables and the increased impact Lean manufacturing has had on the Agile community.

Jon Arild Tørresdal
on Aug 19, 2009
Book Review: Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision Making

One of the responsibilities of self-organizing teams is to take decisions that respect everyone’s opinion. This book has some great examples in coaching the team to navigate through difficult discussions so they can maintain their speed without endangering their success by suspending or ignoring critical issues.

Nick Oostvogels
on Jul 06, 2009
Virtual Panel: Is the Backlog a Vital Artifact and Practice or Waste?

Mary Poppendieck, Ron Jeffries, Jeff Patton, David West, Steve Freeman, and Jason Yip give us their take on backlogs and their importance to successful Agile teams.

Amr Elssamadisy
on Apr 20, 2009
Lean and Agile: Marriage Made in Heaven or Oxymoron?

Scrum and agile methods promote the establishment of a product backlog. Some leaders of the Lean community feel that the product backlog is "waste." This article argues that Lean advocates that see backlogs only as "an inventory" of things to be done are making the classic mistake of viewing software development as a production process. Backlogs are fundamental to Agility.

Dave West
on Feb 13, 2009
A Case For Short Iterations

Dave Nicolette, Agile Coach with Valtech, addresses the question are short iterations better than long. Dave demonstrates that short iterations: allow for more rapid response to change, the opportunity to discover and fix problems more often. He also deals with the concerns that short iterations might lead to burnout and other issues.

Dave Nicolette
on Oct 31, 2008
Case study: Distributed Scrum Project for Dutch Railways

How we customise Scrum to our local context plays a large role in the success or failure of a project. This article describes a successful, large, distributed Scrum project, which had already been scrapped once under a traditional approach. The authors share lessons learned on: project startup, product ownership, testing and the importance of estimates and effective communication.

Marco Mulder Martin van Vliet
on Aug 12, 2008

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