Agile Advice - Working With Agile Methods (Scrum, XP, Lean)

http://pligg.scrum-on.com/ - Just found this through Niall O’Keeffe who is an attendee at my Certified ScrumMaster course.

Last week I gave a talk in Waterloo, Ontario on the topic of Delivering Successful Agile Projects - A Team Approach
.  The slides and a bit more info can be found on the Berteig Consulting site.  There was a great deal of interest so I have also scheduled a public agile project management / certified ScrumMaster course in Waterloo.

Great little article on InfoQ: “Powerful Questions“.

Called “Mr. Squiggle” after an Australian TV show, this exercise looks great! Thanks to Patrick Kua for this great idea.

Our earlier post saying that it was available was a mistake.

Sorry for the mistake.

One of my favorite books in the world is Systemantics, by John Gall. This irreverent look at systems and how they fail has a lot to teach a community that is attempting to re-work the systems of software development. Much of it justifies the “simple set of principles, applied” approach that most Agile methods use. It should also provide good insights into anyone trying to develop and architect complex software systems. The best kind of parody is one that’s hard to tell if it’s parody, because it’s so insightful.

The book is available from the author at the Systems Bible page.

A decent quick look at the kind of material found inside can be found here: Commentary on the principles of “Systemantics”, by Anthony Judge

And this article goes into more discussion about Gall’s laws of systemantics: Bart Stewart on Systemantics

UPDATED: Best quote yet: “Admittedly, it’s not easy to imagine what a self-organizing car engine would look like, but maybe it’s time someone tried.” -Bart Stewart

Why smart people defend bad ideas by Scott Berkun looks at a fascinating, and fairly common, problem. Interestingly, this problem of smart people doing dumb things / defending bad ideas, is often related to perception. Agile principles and practices are about aligning perception among all the stakeholders, and in particular, between an execution team and the rest of the stakeholders. By aligning perception, the best environment is created for doing the right thing. In the case of a business, your project teams are the experts in “how” to do stuff, and your business teams are the experts in “why” to do stuff. This combination of “how” and “why” is done as efficiently as possible using agile work methods.