NEW BOOK – The Scrum Field Guide “Practical Advice for Your First Year”
The Scrum Field Guide (by Mitch Lacey) is meant to help you fine-tune your own implementation, navigate some of the unfamiliar terrain, and more easily scale the hurdles we all encounter along the way.
Who Should Read This Book
If you are thinking about getting starting with Scrum or agile, are at the beginning of your journey, or if you have been at it a year or so but feel like you’ve gotten lost along the way, this book is for you. I’m officially targeting companies that are within six months of starting a project to those that are a year into their implementation, an 18-month window.
This is a book for people who are pragmatic. If you want theory and esoteric discussions, grab another of the many excellent books on Scrum and agile. If, on the other hand, you want practical advice and real data based on my experience running projects both at Microsoft and while coaching teams and consulting at large Fortune 100 companies, this book fits the bill.
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Reference Materials: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) Exam
PMI has provied a a list of publications that may be helpful when preparing for the PMI-ACP exam. A few of the books are:
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FREE eBOOK – Kanban and Scrum: Making the most of Both
This FREE eBOOK DOWNLOAD by Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin is excellent ! It clears up the fog, so you can figure out how Kanban and Scrum might be useful in your own environment. Thanks to InfoQ for posting it.
There isn’t a single “best” way to do things; you have to think for yourself and figure it out – based on your situation !
LEARN ABOUT…
- the difference between Scrum and Kanban.
- their strengths and limitations,
- when to use each
- how and when to improve upon Scrum, or any other tool you may happen to be using.
- how to apply them in real life situations
- and more….
Mary Poppendieck writes:
Henrik Kniberg is one of those rare people who can extract the essence of a complicated situation, sort out the core ideas from the incidental distractions, and provide a crystal clear explanation that is incredibly easy to understand. He makes it clear that these are just tools, and what you really want to do is have a full toolkit, understand the strengths and limitations of each tool and how to use them all. The important thing is not the tool you start with, but the way you constantly improve your use of that tool and expand your toolset over time.
David Anderson, the founder of Kanban, writes,
Kanban is proving useful to teams doing Agile software development but equally it is gaining traction with teams taking a more traditional approach. Kanban is being introduced as part of a Lean initiative to morph the culture of organizations and encourage continuous improvement.
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NEW RECORDING: COACHING – Accountability: Creating a Winnable Game
Can you make people do anything they don’t want to do?
Holding others accountable is a myth. It’s like Sisyphus being condemned to pushing the rock up the hill… It’s exhausting. If you are a manager whose job it is to get a team to work together and get the job done, this may be bad news. I am sorry.
I know it can be extremely frustrating when nothing you say or do seems to make a sustainable difference with some people.
You can micromanage, push, scold, even threaten certain people and get what you need for a little while, but as soon as you turn them loose, the rock rolls downhill again. And you start over, doing the same thing you have been doing – pushing, scolding, complaining like a broken record.
Ten Lessons for Leading During Crisis
I like to share great articles I find – since we can all learn from each other. This one from ProjectTimes.com talks about a great book by Linda Henman on ‘Landing in the Executive Chair’ where she talks about what a leader should learn in order to prepare for a crisis and what a leader should do during a crisis. If you haven’t read the book – get it – but this article will give you the highlights and lessons that you can put into practice right away.
It doesn’t matter if you are using Agile – Lean – Waterfall – or some other practices…Crisis rears it’s ugly head in many projects – and when you least expect it. Project Managers will find these ten lessons of great value in preparation to minimize the impact to their projects and their organizations.
Lesson 1: Heed the Early Warning Signs
There are often early warning signs that a storm is brewing. Sailors have a saying, ‘Red sails in morning, sailor take warning, Red sails at night, sailors delight.’ Take notice of early warning signs in your project. Be aware of persistent customer, stakeholder or project member complaints, rumors, turnover in the project, and resistance to change due to innovation or technology. These always seem to start off small and begin to swell. Don’t ignore them and find out exactly if there is the potential of a problem brewing over the horizon.
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WEBINAR – Effective Specifications for Agile Projects
Fast turnaround and short iterations require a very efficient and precise specifications process to provide direction. Two emerging practices of specification “by example” and “agile acceptance testing” enable agile teams to specify, deliver and verify better. This webinar will teach you about these practices and how to implement them in your project.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- how to ensure a shared understanding of specifications by all stakeholders
- how to manage requirements to provide details just in time & ensure all development team members have enough information to work
- how to ensure that the product built is fit for purpose
- how to know when you are really done with a story
- how to facilitate change in software with live documentation
Retrospectives – Make Good Teams Great !
Project retrospectives do more than just help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. They help improve productivity, quality, team trust and more. Where as traditionally, retrospectives (also known as “post-mortems” or “lessons learned”) are only performed at the end of the project — too late to help.
This 50 min video discusses how organizations using iterative, incremental methods, Agile retrospectives are used to stimulate continuous improvement throughout a project.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- The retrospective cycle
- Where it fits in the Agile process
- What are the 5 parts to a retrospective
- Where will it get you?
- How to support change
WEBINAR – Becoming Agile
(click book to purchase)
Learn how more traditional PMBOK and Waterfall organizations are becoming agile…and listen to great Q&A sessions with the audience
TOPICS COVERED
- Is Agile only for software projects?
- How and Where to identify areas to leverage Agile
- How do you move to Agile?
- How does Agile affect the traditional Project Manager role?
- and more…
David J Andersen’s book on KANBAN is out….
The founder of KANBAN and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), David J Andersen, just released his latest book called “KANBAN: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business”.
Kanban allows businesses to leverage Agile-Lean approaches for software developement and beyond.
See how this “continuous improvement” and “change methodology” can help your company adopt Agilility as well in chapters that will cover:
- Solving an Agile Manager’s Delemma
- What is the Kanban Method?
- Benefits of Kanban
- Implementing Kanban
- Making Improvements
- Issue Management and Escalation Policies
- and more…..
Read more <Click Here>
The founder of KANBAN, David J Andersen, just released his latest book called “KANBAN:Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business”.
Kanban allows businesses to leverage Agile-Lean approaches for software developement and beyond.
See how this “continuous improvement” and “change methodology” can help your company adopt Agilility as well.
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Article Highlights
Organizations today are facing a crisis. Productivity is one-quarter of 1965 levels. Innovation continues to decline. Workers are disgruntled. Customers are frustrated. Brands are unraveling. Executive turnover is accelerating. In the last 25 years, start-ups created 40 million jobs in the US, while established firms created almost none. Traditional management is broken. Agility enables an organization to respond quickly to external forces (such as new market opportunities and competitive forces) as well as to respond quickly to new insights attained internally. Moving beyond effective teams: While many have achieved local optimizations of more effective teams, few have achieved agility at the enterprise level. Even when team agility has been achieved, if improvements to how the business is selecting their product enhancements isn’t done, overall return on investment of software development may not have significantly improved. To manifest agility ….. .
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Let’s Connect!
My Speaking Engagements …..
-Feb 28: PMI Agile CoP: Agile Estimation 102
-Apr 18: TOYOTA HQ: Start Using Agile|Lean in your Projects Today
-Nov 10: HOW TO PLAN, MANAGE, and TRACK ITERATIONS (ProjectTimes)
-Dec 16: DEALING WITH THE TOP 10 ISSUES DURING & AFTER AN ITERATION (ProjectTimes)
-Jan 13: AGILE REQUIREMENT GATHERING & DOCUMENTATION - BEYOND USER STORIES (ProjectTimes)
-Feb 10: DEALING WITH THE TOP 10 ISSUES IN AGILE ADOPTION (ProjectTimes)
Some Agile User-Groups and Links…
