In his book “Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency”, Tom DeMarco makes the point that you can’t be creative when you are overworked or overburdened. Stress kills innovation as does busyness. Little slack leads to little time to look around leads to little improvement. To be creative, your mind needs to feel free and […]

What’s a Spike? Who should create it? And what should it look like in VersionOne? (Or in Agile Central, Pivotal Tracker, HP AGM, Jira, or your ALM tool.) Excellent questions! I thought I’d share my thoughts on the topic: What’s a Spike? Sometimes a story is too large or overly complex. Perhaps the implementation or a 3rd party […]

If you don’t find your standup effective, it may be due to a lack of proper preparation. Mike wrote a nice article on the daily stand-up meeting and why it probably isn’t effective for you. Once you’ve mastered those tips, consider your prep. Here’s small subset of things I consider before each standup. This varies by situation. Are […]

I’m always looking ahead to the next planning or the next estimating meeting. I teach this behavior to my clients whenever I’m coaching a new ScrumMaster or Product Owner. I start off by involving them in what I’m doing, showing what needs to be done and by explaining my thinking. The teaching is very experiential, yet incomplete in […]

Ever seen a sucky demo? One that doesn’t start on time, with technology issues, too many people in the room, people on the phone not on mute, confusion over what stories will be demo’d and who will demo them? Let’s have no more sucky demos. Here are some thoughts on how to make that happen. Plan […]