Uncertainty & the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™)

What is the connection between Uncertainty and the Scaled Agile Framework? Uncertainty is one of the core reasons we need to be agile. Different modes of Business/Requirements/Technology uncertainties impact our economic costs in product development – especially the potential impact of risk. The first principle of SAFe™ is “Take an economic view”. I frequently use …

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Risk-aware Product Development (a.k.a. Agile)

“There’s no predictability/commitment in Agile” Over the years I’ve heard my share of these kinds of statements from various levels of executives: “When my guys run a product development release I really want to know what I will get at the end so I can make business plans accordingly” “In the old days when we …

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Lean/Kanban approach to Teams

To Team or not to Team? If you look at the definition of Kanban or Lean, you wouldn’t find teams anywhere there. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, you can find “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams” Scrum is quite clear about the topic (Quoting the Scrum Guide 2011) “Scrum …

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Lowering Work in Process (WIP) in the Real-world

Some of us have the luxury of designing processes for greenfield systems meaning there is no history/legacy to deal with. Typically though, we are dealing with Brownfield/Legacy systems – This usually means there is some work in the system already, there are outstanding commitments, and some existing queues between steps in our processes. I’m working …

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