Culture Change: A new viewpoint

I read an idea about culture change that is different. “if you need to change an entire culture, here’s a tip: don’t be too idealistic about human nature.” The article, in the Sunday 23 Boston Globe (http://goo.gl/jYLdY) posits that people don’t change because you appeal to their better side, or that you convincingly show them a … Continue reading →

I Have a Question

I have a question!! “I have a team that won’t self-organize.” “ My team always selects more PBIs than they can do. The members say that the software is too complex and corrupt to finish anything.” “My Product Owner isn’t engaged.” What do I do?? In my Scrum classes, I ground everyone in the theory … Continue reading →

Self-organization and our belief that we are in charge

The Scrum Master only has the authority to ensure that the Scrum Team follows the rules of Scrum. If not immediately compliant, then working toward compliance increasingly and consistently (for instance, transparency of the increment surpasses most development teams skills and tooling initially). The Scrum Master has not authority to tell the development team or … Continue reading →

Waste Not

Waste impedes agility. It not only slows progress, but it robs money that could otherwise go to creating value. I was considering waste in light of the notions of velocity and capacity. Some Scrum users try to predict the outcome of the upcoming Sprint using velocity, the amount of work or PBIs they predict can … Continue reading →

Scrum But Replaced by Scrum And

Five years ago, the term, “Scrum-But” became popular. This phrase pointed out the gap between just using Scrum-and building great products with Scrum. I would ask someone if they were using Scrum. They would respond, “We use Scrum, but we can’t always complete all the regression testing within a Sprint, so we often have regression … Continue reading →

New Book: Software in Thirty Days

Software In Thirty Days (or less) Jeff Sutherland and I have done it. We wrote a book together, our first joint writing since the initial publication of Scrum in 1995. What prompted us? The question that we frequently are asked: How do we sell Scrum to our management? I’ve always been puzzled by this question. … Continue reading →

The First CSM’s

Many people claim to have been at the first Scrum Master class that I taught in May, 2003. Here is a picture of the class and list of people there. Ken

I was thinking …

I was thinking about New Year Resolutions. I thought about resolving to be a more friendly, warm, compassionate, conciliatory, moderate, and compromising person.  My thinking was prompted by a recent email, that informed me:  “After all these years, of hearing people talking about you, I defended you.  I tried to appease them … maybe as … Continue reading →

Methodology Façade Pattern

While I was working at Intuit, a developer asked me what was next, after Scrum. He related that Intuit had built its own waterfall methodology. Then Inuit bought a commercial methodology. Then it moved to RUP. Then it built its own Agile process. Inuit was now using Scrum. What did I think that Intuit would … Continue reading →

Comments Policy

I am adding a comments policy to this blog. I expect to continue writing about controversial topics, and I encourage people to share their thoughts through comments. That said, I want to make sure that we keep things on the up-and-up. Moving forward: * Comments need to have to real names. At least, they have … Continue reading →