Scrum

Making promises you can keep WITHOUT Scrum Sprint Commitment using Classes of Service

How can we make promises we can keep without a commitment to the sprint content? So I convinced you that the Scrum Sprint Commitment is not such a great idea. I convinced you it is mainly there for learning. You want to move to a commitment to try to meet the forecast instead of committing …

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The Scrum Sprint Commitment/Forecast as an Expectation

Disclaimer –  I’m a well-known Scrum Sprint Commitment basher. But in the last few weeks especially while processing the Lean Conference Boston Keynote by Steven Spear I have a fresh perspective I wanted to share. There is no improvement without learning One of Spear’s key points was that there is no improvement without learning. There is …

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Experiences for a Kanban trainer in a Scrum Gathering

Stranger in a strange land This week I attended and spoke at Scrum Gathering Atlanta It was a mixed experience for me. On the one hand it was interesting to see the focus of the Scrum crowd on the other hand it was a bit hard for me to find content to connect to and …

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Do we need Scrum to get to Kanban???

I just wrote a lengthy reply on a kanbandev thread about Using Scrum to implement Kanban and vice versa and thought I would share it here, especially so I can tweet it directly and try to spark a discussion about it in Scrum Gathering Atlanta (where I’m currently at…) I engaged the conversation when Danko said: …

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Guest Post – Is starting with Kanban really easier than with Scrum?

Today I’m proud to host a guest post by another AgileSparks coach – Yael Rabinovitz. Yael has been working with several clients on Scrum implementations and has recently started using the Kanban Method (I wonder who gave her that crazy idea…) and is sharing her thoughts about the first steps into both approaches. Without further …

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So what IS Scrumban?

Background 3 years ago in Agile Israel 2009 I talked about ScrumBan. The slideshare presentation has been one of most popular ones, and remarkably enough it is the second hit on google when searching for ScrumBan. Go figure… Anyhow from time to time people ask me where they can go look up what Scrumban is …

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My favorite Excel-based Agile Backlog Templates

(September 2015 update – This is actually quite outdated. Most people actually use an agile lifecycle management tool when they move on from post its… so I haven’t recently looked at any of those templates or others that might be out there… Just thought it would be fair to say that considering this is the most popular blog post on the site…)

People frequently ask me for simple Excel-based templates they can start with. Here is the list of references I provide them with. (From now on I can have a single pointer, how convenient…)

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Scrum Sprint Commitment Rant

Going on a Rant If there’s one thing that makes me mad whenever I see it is teams abusing the commitment concept in scrum. I’ve been on a rampage against dysfunctional sprint commitments for a while now, but lately my thoughts have crystalized a bit, especially when I had a chance to discuss this with …

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