Constellation: A Retrospective Exercise
While a successful Agile retrospective implies an open discussion in a team, many would agree that it's not always easy to have everyone in a team actively involved in an exchange of opinions. There can be a number of reasons why people feel retic...
Your Product Owner Is Missing in Action — Now What?
We all know that three key groups exist in both the creation and implementation of successful Agile teams. These groups serve basic functions that are important for the team's collective and ultimate success. Many of the functions that each group ...
Real-Time Free Testing: A New Form of Agile Testing
When we're working on software projects and following an Agile method, e.g., Scrum, our usual focus is on how we communicate with customers about the actual requirements, and how we manage (or empower) the Agile team so that deliverable software c...
Agile Does Damage
Agile can inflict a lot of irreversible damage to companies and teams and, in most cases, it cannot be repaired. I sometimes encounter companies that have implemented a form of Agile. Sometimes they use Scrum or Kanban, and on other occasions they...
Case Study: Scrum Followed Properly Versus Not
It's not the methodology or the tool that fails to deliver quality software — it's the people involved. I strongly believe this and am here to share a case study of when Scrum was followed properly versus when it was not followed properly. B...
An Approach for Scrum in a Fixed-Price Contracts World
We know a fixed-price contract is maybe not the best alternative when applying Scrum to a software development project. However, some organizations will not change the way they approach contracts for software development projects. What if this org...
Are You My Customer or My Partner?
"IT as a Business" (ITAAB) has been a common marketing slogan and business model promoted by thought leaders from firms such as Gartner, Forrester, and Forbes in the past ten years.1 At its core is a philosophy of managing IT as a self-sustaining ...