I couldn’t find this anywhere with my few Google searches, so if anyone knows where this is from, please let me know:
The bitterness of poor quality lasts longer than the sweet taste of meeting a deadline
Okay, this is only marginally related to agile, but I thought it was interesting nevertheless: How to Write a Detailed Strategic Plan. The main connection to Agile Work, is that you need to have a clear performance goal in mind towards which you are working. This may be a great way to clarify your thoughts about such a goal.
Tobias Mayer has written a fascinating and valuable article about what it means to be doing Scrum. There are some very practical ideas (e.g. shortening Sprint or iteration length) and some more philosophical ones (e.g. the ScrumMaster role is not always necessary!) It’s a great read, and I agree with everything there, except for one point…
Last April I wrote a brief article showing the relationship between five different learning models. I’ve discovered two more for your edification:
The Shewhart (Deming) Cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act
and the Six Sigma DMAIC cycle: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control
I find it so interesting that the same basic ideas have circulated (no pun intended) in so many different disciplines for so many years. Does anyone know if there is a good description of a universal / abstract cycle of which all the others could reasonably be considered instances?
Thanks to Mark on the scrumdevelopment Yahoo! group for pointing out this great little article: The Toyota Way is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers. The main thrust of the article is the difficulty that Toyota has had in getting managers outside of Japan to accept some of the core principles and practices of the Toyota Way. One interesting example:
Worse, some executives like Mr. Konishi complain of managers at Toyota factories who have not adhered to some of the company’s most basic creeds, like allowing workers to stop factory lines when they spot defects. Empowering factory workers has long been central to Toyota’s quality control.
by Paul Klipp
For a decade now, agile processes, of which the best known is probably eXtreme Programming, have been gaining wide acceptance among developers, but many customers are still in the dark. Agile sounds good, but what does it mean? This is a quick and dirty preview of what you can expect when you choose an agile process.
Well. Last iteration was great! I didn’t document it, because it was trivial: I had one full day coaching engagement plus a two-day public course. And then the rest of the week I did nothing!!! What a joy! Anyway, now onto iteration 6 - cleaning up from the cancelled iteration and catching up from the vacation.
In many traditional organizations, developers end up making business decisions that they have no right making. Maybe they are not able to get timely feedback from a business expert. Maybe they are so ’sure’ of the answer they just don’t bother asking. Maybe they are so knee deep in technical details they don’t realize they are making a business decision. If they make the wrong choice, this can have some pretty nasty consequences for the business in question.