A concern that comes up frequently when you start talking about applying a WIP limit is: “So, what I understand from you is that at some point you will block incoming work requests if the WIP limit is reached, yes? Well, we cannot do that. We cannot tell people we will not work on their …
Once people start to get “Stop Starting Start Finishing” thinking (Kanban) or the “Focus on the current sprint” thinking (Scrum) a frequent question that comes up is how to deal with people who are required for different activities throughout the work life cycle. Some example scenarios: “I’m a tester who both participates in ATDD spec. …
Lean Kanban North America a.k.a Modern Management Methods conference for 2014 is coming up. This year it will take place in beautiful San Francisco. I love San Francisco and the conference hotel is smack in the area I love most – the waterfront… But I’m not sure how much time I will have to wander …
Earlier this week I published a guest post about how managers need to change if they want agile to succeed by Yaki Koren. Some blog/twitter followers asked for elaboration and Yaki was gracious enough to comply. I suspect the fact that this is a really hot topic for him this week helped. Without further a …
Agile Israel 2013 took place yesterday. This year was they year of “Hands on”. Around 600 attendees came to get practical hands on advice on multiple aspects of the agile world. My talk was about running your agile journey on your own. This talk was aimed at people looking into agile or exploring ways to …
(UPDATE: This post is quite deprecated now. For up-2-date reading lists go to the AgileSparks Per-Topic Reading Lists) I’ve recently gone into Seal/Whale mode and didn’t have too much time to blog. Sorry for that… To make the wait for new content easier, I’m sharing a couple of reading lists that I curated recently for use in …
After a serious break from Kanban Mechanics posts, here is one for you Kanban System Designers/Practitioners out there… I’ve recently become a fan of the “Virtual Horizontal Swimming Lanes” style of Electronic Kanban Boards. These Boards don’t use physical horizontal lanes but instead use dynamic and easy filtering to show virtual lanes. Specifically I helped …
Background I recently had a couple of weeks with a few activities related to “Agile Testing”. “Agile Testing” for those not familiar with it is the name we give to the set of thinking guidelines, principles and practices that help run the testing aspects of product development/maintenance in a more effective way under an Agile …
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 …
I want to talk about a kanban system design issue today. Do we need a way to portray full stack ranking of cards throughout a kanban system or is it enough to see stack ranking per lane ? To elaborate – sometimes it feels necessary to convey the priority of cards and have a way …