scrum - Yeret Agility

Kanban FAQ: Should I FINISH what I’m working on or help the team READY new work items?
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Kanban FAQ: Should I FINISH what I’m working on or help the team READY new work items?

kanban, Scrum, ScrumBan

Kanban FAQ: Should I FINISH what I’m working on or help the team READY new work items?

By Yuval Yeret|2014-03-16T17:03:29-04:00March 16, 2014|kanban, Scrum, ScrumBan|

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. workshop (upstream) and exploratory testing (downstream). The developers are free to start a new story, should I help them with the ATDD thinking for a [...]

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

By Yuval Yeret|2012-07-02T18:12:53-04:00July 2, 2012|Scrum, ScrumBan|

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 to deliver the whole forecast. But your Product Owner has a real problem with this. He understands all this learning rationale but his stakeholders want [...]

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The Scrum Sprint Commitment/Forecast as an Expectation

By Yuval Yeret|2012-06-30T17:56:57-04:00June 30, 2012|Change Management, kanban, Management, Scrum|

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 no learning without surprises. There are no surprises without setting expectations. Specifically challenging expectations that will be missed occasionally. See a quote from one of [...]

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Do we need Scrum to get to Kanban???
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Do we need Scrum to get to Kanban???

kanban, Scrum, ScrumBan

Do we need Scrum to get to Kanban???

By Yuval Yeret|2012-05-08T11:16:09-04:00May 8, 2012|kanban, Scrum, ScrumBan|

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: Scrumban.... Well, another mystery regarding the above is whether scrum is an evolution of kanban (which means you evolve to a point that you can [...]

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So what IS Scrumban?
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So what IS Scrumban?

Blog, kanban, Scrum, ScrumBan

So what IS Scrumban?

By Yuval Yeret|2012-04-28T08:08:41-04:00April 28, 2012|Blog, kanban, Scrum, 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 and I find myself not sure where to point them for a good brief description. I have a problem with my presentation - it is [...]

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Scrum Sprint Commitment Rant

By Yuval Yeret|2011-10-13T10:55:09-04:00October 13, 2011|kanban, Metrics, Scrum|

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 Jim benson, Alan Shalloway, Chris Hefley and Jon Terry last week at Lean Kanban Benelux 2011. Background So what is the problem? Well quite often [...]

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How I would simulate time-boxed agile in the @getkanban kanban board game

By Yuval Yeret|2011-01-12T11:08:54-05:00January 12, 2011|Blog, Games, kanban|

At Agilesparks we've recently been using the Kanban Board Game developed by Russell Heally (@getkanban) quite extensively. We use it as part of Kanban courses, sessions for Scrum teams that want to learn about Kanban, Kanban teams that are already working and want to raise their game, as well as in Kaizen sessions for project management teams. We love what the game does, and it has actually become a challenge to coordinate which of us has the game kits at [...]

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Want my elevator-pitch answer to what is Kanban for a Scrum rookie?

By Yuval Yeret|2010-10-05T11:55:35-04:00October 5, 2010|kanban|

Our coaching team at agilesparks runs into this question a lot. Many of the teams we are working with are familiar with Scrum and using it. Other teams are just now going into Scrum. Since kanban is becoming a hot buzzword, we often get asked - so what is this kanban thing? How is it related to Scrum? We needed a good answer, that depends on the context, the amount of time you have to answer, and the maturity [...]

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MMF driven sprints in a Kanban world

By Yuval Yeret|2010-09-24T12:17:36-04:00September 24, 2010|kanban|

The more experience I get with Kanban, and the more I talk about it with people, I see that one of the main challenges is maintaining some form of goal-driven cadence that energizes the team. If every one of your Kanban Cards/Stories is an independent goal (e.g. a support environment) its easy to connect to the business and there's usually an SLA to energize you. If you are working in an environment where the business goals are quite big, and [...]

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By Yuval Yeret|2009-07-06T21:47:10-04:00July 6, 2009|Blog|

Lately I've been trying to understand how best to represent Known Unknowns (KU) stories/tasks in the BDC. I'm talking about things like Support cases from customers - things not related to stories from the backlog essentially, that you know you will need to address. I'm wondering how the burndown chart should reflect those.

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