People vs. Process

One of my favorite little management blurbs, seen on the door of an SVP at a major financial services company: “Processes don’t write software, people do!” And of course, the Agile Manifesto states: “… we have come to value: Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools…” Here’s an interesting little writeup about people and process. My own take is quite similar: a process can be more or less helpful, but only if people are willing to learn and change can true progress be made.

The One True Metric

Agile Work requires that we align our perception of reality in order to understand each other and do work that is considered valuable by everyone. One very blunt and seemingly simple way to do this is with metrics. But metrics need to be in context and that is the part that is hard to get right. Does your organization get it right?

Continue reading

Scrum Saves the Day For Media Student

Scrum is one of the Agile Methods that can be applied in many different fields of work. Last year, I was able to present the basic Scrum framework in a two hour session to a class of media students at Keyano College in northern Alberta. They used Scrum for their class project – a documentary video. One of the students really took to Scrum, and used it in his next class to save another group project… and get the best mark in the class! Full story follows…

Continue reading