Driving Continuous Improvement
Find a vast array of advanced scrum topics and patterns that can increase your Team’s Velocity. Online courses and classes for Scrum Masters, Scrum Product Owners, and those team members seeking continuous improvement. If you’re not a member, visit our pricing and plans page for more detail.
Patterns: Finish Early, Accelerate Faster
Finish Early, Accelerate Faster (FEAF) is a Scrum pattern language composed of a number of Scrum Patterns used together. FEAF is an incredibly powerful pattern language because it will help new Teams establish good practices and take experienced Teams Hyper-Productive; defined as a Velocity 400% higher than a Teams’ initial Velocity.
Scrum Retrospectives
One of the core principles in Scrum is the idea of continuous improvement. Each Sprint the Team engages in an inspect-and-adapt cycle during the Retrospective meeting. Beyond that though, the Scrum Guide doesn’t offer much insight into how to run a successful Retrospective and how to use the meeting to improve production, quality, and velocity.
All Continuous Improvement Topics
SCRUM: Maybe we need to take a lesson from the South Africans
Naked Springboks tested at camp South Africans are agonising over their defeat by New Zealand. South African rugby players were subjected to naked toughening-up exercises at a gruelling boot camp before the World Cup in Australia. Some South Africans doubt the wisdom...
Scrum: Another way to think about scaling a project
It is hard for people to realize how radical SCRUM is because it is such a simple process, anyone can do it. Here is an example to expand your thinking about SCRUM. Below is data from Jones, Capers. Applied Software Measurement, Second Edition. McGraw Hill, 1997 on...
Agile Manifesto: Who does it have in common with Open Source and Hacking?
Eric Raymond's analysis of the convergence of hacking, open source, and the agile movement is of interest. Eric is well known for writing two seminal open source articles that have strongly influenced the movement: "[Hacker] is a very complex term, but more than...
SCRUM: How to Fail with the Rational Unified Process: Seven Steps to Pain and Suffering
I received a request not to post this article previously, even though it was posted elsewhere. Craig Larman agreed to send anyone a copy. Now it has a home on the Agile Alliance site for easy access. It's a good read and everyone should check it out. How to Fail with...
SCRUM: IEEE Computer Agile Issue – June 2003
IEEE Computer published an issue on agile development this month. Of particular interest is an article on the history of iterative development which is highly recommended for anyone interested in the background of Scrum or any other Agile method. Larman, Craig and...
SCRUM: Review of Agile Software Development with SCRUM
Slashdot review of best available book on SCRUM Schwaber, K. and Beedle, M. (forward by Jeff Sutherland) Agile Software Development with SCRUM. Prentice Hall, 2001. This book holds a remarkable ranking of 602 on Amazon's best seller list and gets five star reviews....
SCRUM: Keep Team Size Under 7!
A few teams in a 500 person development group at IDX Systems (now GE Healthcare) generated production code at five times the industry average, while most of the teams who executed SCRUM, only doubled productivity over industry average. One of the problems in the large...
SCRUM: Removing bottlenecks is a core systems design principle
How do you optimize throughput in any systems process? Goldratt's book is extremely useful to any techncial expert, whether in software development, or a surgeon in the Operating Room of the Future. It is written as a novel, easy and fun to read, and based on...
SCRUM: Saving the Product While Downsizing 96%
Mike Cohn has written a very cool article on how he used SCRUM to assure product survival and a company sale with 12 people after laying off 88. SCRUM works best under pressure! Cohn, Mike. From the Front Line: The Upside of Downsizing. STQE Magazine 5:1:18-21,...
SCRUM: Agile database development
Fowler, Martin and Sadalage, Pramod. Evolutionary Database Design Abstract: Over the last few years we've developed a number of techniques that allow a database design to evolve as an application develops. This is a very important capability for agile methodologies....