agile, scrum, coaching, lean
Scrum
An agile cloze
175 days
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeyminddesign/4553428118/
I was just inspired by an german christmas cloze. It even inspired me so much, that I decided to write an agile cloze and let you fill the missing pieces 
So, here you are.
The best way _____________________.
Scrum is ______________ but XP _________________ with or without Kanban.
I currently read ______________ and think _____________.
___________ is the best thing that happened to our company because ____________.
Would you believe _______________.
_____________________ awesome.
If ______________ the world would be a better place.
Happy __________________.
You can either leave a comment or create a blog post based on the above cloze. I’m looking forward to your “fill-in”
10 things to mess up your retrospective
499 days
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It’s about time for a new list. Today, I decided to write a list on how to mess up your retrospective. There are a lot of possibilities to do this and the following tips will help you doing so 
1 – don’t prepare anything
As the retrospective is the simplest and least important meeting of all Scrum meetings, it doesn’t need any preparation. Just come together and start. Wait, where are the pens and the post-its? Forget about it! Just sit together and chat a bit.
2 – Start immediately
As there is no need to set the stage, start immediately with gathering data. Immediately start the retrospective with asking the two questions: “What went wrong?” and “What went well”. That should be sufficient to get great results.
3 – Don’t check if the tasks of the last Retro were done
We don’t care about the old crap from the last retrospective. If it was important enough, it will make it again to our retrospective results. And again, and again, and again, and again….
4 – don’t use post its
Post Its are evil! Endless trees have to die to create this evildoing. You have silent and introvert people in your team? Then maybe it is time for them to learn to speak up. It also helps to reduce all of this retrospective waste, with all of these things that can’t be solved anyway.
5 – Forget about the Insight
Insight? Isn’t it clear why you failed in your last sprint? Maybe you should also skip the “Gather data” step and instantly start to “Decide what to do”.
6 – No DUE date
Due dates are for waterfallers. As we’re working in an agile environment, we don’t need any due dates.
7 – no responsible
Repeat after me: “We’re no waterfallers”. A responsible person is a concept from the stone age. We as a team will make sure that the task will be done.
8 – No time box
This whole concept of a time box is exhausting, isn’t it? Can’t we just skip it for the retrospective? Just sit together and talk and for sure we will have something valuable in the ehh, when it is over, eventually…
9 – try to solve everything
You collected a big list of issues? Then you should try to solve all of them. It can’t be that you ignore some of the problems of the last sprint. Define a task for each identified impediment or problem and solve it in the next sprint.
10 – Always use the same scheme
Always ask the same questions and do the same exercises in all of your retrospectives. This will create a comfy environment for your team and you ensure that you’ll always have a energized and creative team. Your retrospective results will be awesome. Ignore all of this fancy new methods to facilitate a retrospective. This is all new age shit.
I’m looking forward to your experiences, when trying these things out. Please leave a comment
5 Reasons Why a Product Owner Team Might Be a Good Idea
17132 days
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During this week I read an interesting article called “Is Scrum a –ism that doesn’t work for real?“. One of the things that @marcusoftnet mentioned in his article was this:
The product owner is an unicorn
I continue to read and had to agree with him in many points. The rest of the week I kept thinking about this and came to the conclusion that in some environments a product owner team would be a better fit. But what could be a good reason for a product owner team?
1 – Responsibility
One good reason might be a shared responsibility. In some companies it seems to be difficult to define THE one and only PO with all needed responsibilities. Even worse, I saw product owners, whose decisions were overruled by their bosses and managers. This does not only have a demotivating effect on the PO, but also the development team becomes insecure when working with her. When you have a PO team, it is much more difficult to overrule them.
2 – Diversity
Another good reason for the team approach is the diversity you get when you have a team. My ideal PO team consists of a product manager, one person from marketing, one from UX and a techie. That way you have all needed knowledge in the team to create an awesome backlog. I saw a lot of bad POs who were unable to create a good backlog, because he missed some knowledge in an important area e.g the market or technical know how. This will all vanish if you have a PO team.
3 – Availability
Ever heard about ScrumMasters taking over the role of the PO, when he is not available? Bad idea! But it does happen and not only once. This is another good reason for a PO team. Even if one or two members of the team are not available (ill, on vacation), the team is still able to work. No availability issues anymore.
4 – Teamwork
A good backlog is the result of great teamwork. I never saw a backlog that was created by a single person and still was in a good shape. I know that there are no rules that the PO should be the only person to create new items in a backlog, but many teams think so. A PO team forces them to work together. Of course they still have to work tightly with the development team, do backlog grooming sessions or even ask a developer to help to maintain the backlog. A PO team will help to foster the collaboration in a team.
5 – Fun
Last but not least, working in a team is much more fun. I know this should be also the case if you have a single PO, but I never saw a PO that sat in the same office or even floor than the development team. I even saw POs that were not only sitting in the same office but at a completely different location. With a PO team you force them to work at the same location and I swear it is much more fun to work this way.
What do you think? What are your experiences with POs? Do you also think that the role of the PO is a unicorn? I’m looking forward to your comments.
UPDATE:
Thanks to @maritzavdh here are some links for further reading:
5 Signs That Your User Stories Suck
9160 days
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About one a half years ago, I wrote an article about how to mess up your user stories. In the meantime I saw other “User Stories” that gave me creeps. That’s why I decided to write this article. So here is my new list of signs, that your user stories suck…
1- Your user Stories Are Only a Wrapper
If your user stories only consist of one task, this is a sign that you just using them as a wrapper. I don’t know why, but it seems that some people believe, that they have to use the user story format for everything. A user story is “a promise for a conversation”. If there is nothing to discuss and it is a simple task, than write it down like this. Don’t wrap a pseudo user story around it. In most cases this is also a sign that your user stories are too small.
2 – Your user stories can be done in less than a day
If you have 40+ user stories on your Sprint Backlog, it gets really hard to get a commitment from your team. Some people might say now: “Wait, isn’t it great if they were able to create such small stories?”. Yes, it is great, but not if all of these stories are tasks. In such cases, these stories belong to a bigger story and don’t make sense on their own. Check if your stories are meant to add new functionality, if not something is wrong.
3 – Your user Story Doesn’t Describe a Feature
This is somewhat related to 1 and 2, because in most cases these signs come in together. If your stories are describing tasks for the developer, instead of describing a new functionality, something went wrong. I saw POs writing user stories that described thing like “Write document X” or “Create acceptance test Y”. In those cases I’m asking for the DoD of the team, because those things clearly belong there. And if you don’t want to add them to the DoD, create a task but don’t rape the user story format.
4 – You Use It For Everything
It’s great that you decided to use user stories to create your backlog. But you know what: You can use any format that you like. There is no rule in Scrum that you have to use user stories. You’re not forced to use this format for everything that is in your backlog. In a lot of cases it just don’t make sense, e.g. when you want to add non-functional requirements. Instead add those non-functional requirements to the acceptance criteria of your user stories. If they apply to more than one, create an epic and add it there. But please, don’t use the user story format for everything that is in your backklog.
5 – You Lost Your User
Did you write stories like: “As a project manager…”, “As a product manager….”, “As a developer…” or “As a test technician…”? Than you have lost the real user of your software. It won’t be the project manager or product manager who will use your software. Start over and ask yourself who will use it and write your user stories with their view in your mind. Another possibilty would be to create personas. But always have your user in the focus.
I’m looking forward to your comments. What signs did you observe?
A Checklist for a Distributed Retrospective
8174 days
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More and more agile teams have the problem, that they are not collocated. If you work in a distributed team, you know how difficult it is to stay in contact. It gets even worse, when you have a big time shift between the teams. But in such situations it is even more important to do a team wide retrospective. That’s why I created a checklist for retrospectives in distributed teams. I believe that most of the points also apply to other meetings, like e.g the Sprint Review in Scrum. To facilitate a successful distributed retrospective you need the following:
A Co-Facilitator
It is very difficult to facilitate two teams, if one of the teams is located 1000km away. It don’t has to be a experienced coach, just somebody who prepares everything off-site and helps facilitating the retrospective.
Laptops
As I suggest to use an online tool for your retrospective, every team member should have access to a laptop. At least two team members should have one laptop to create their virtual post-its.
Beamer
Every team needs a beamer, so that you can show what is happening on the wall.
Network
Make sure that every laptop has network access. If you’re lucky a WLAN is in place, if not you need a switch and enough network cables.
Video conferencing
If available use a video conference system. In my experience it is very important, that everybody can see each other. A face speaks more than a thousand words.
Online Cardboard
As you won’t be able to use a physical cardboard, you need one online. There are several tools out there:
I use corkboard.me as it was updating the screens of the other participants very fast. It is also quite important, that you don’t need to create an account to use the tool. Thanks to Nils Wloka, Pawel Wrzeszcz, Barry O’Reilly, Angeline Tan and Katrin Elster for helping me to collect this list.
Prepare the Online Cardboard
As you would prepare a normal whiteboard or cork board, you also have to prepare your online cardboard. Make sure to search for a nice picture which presents the theme for the upcoming retrospective and that you put the agenda online.
More time for preparation
As you also have to care for the technical stuff and need some time to try if everything is working, the preparation time increases. That’s why it is important to plan for some additional preparation time.
Final thought
If you have all these things in place, there is no real difference to a normal retrospective. You can use nearly all retrospective tools, that are out there. And don’t forget the different phases of every successful retrospective.
Even though a retrospective with a distributed team can work out great, the team should meet in real on a regular basis. If possible the whole team should meet in real every second retrospective. I know that won’t be possible anytime, but it is worth trying. As Jutta Eckstein says: “You will pay for it anyway”. Either you pay for the flights or for less productivity.
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