Tag Archives: agile
Component Diagrams, 2.0 Style
I was designing a high-level architectural slide for a client presentation and was looking for a way to best represent individual components in the system. My goal was to enumerate the components; I did not need to show the interactions … Continue reading
Bad Timing of a Retrospective
During the last sprint, we made a critical error in planning our meetings. Due to time constraints and people’s schedules, we scheduled the Sprint Retrospective for the last sprint after the Sprint Planning meeting for the next sprint. The retrospective … Continue reading
Fostering Innovation
When I was at eHarmony, they wanted to transform the company to a culture of innovation. They did not succeed. This is not something that can be proclaimed to declared. There are three things that need to exist to foster … Continue reading
Incrementally Iterate
Avoid making large sweeping changes to a product. Small evolutions are better than large revolutions. Large changes tend to alienate users when they feel they lost their expert knowlege of the system and their frustration will climax when changes do … Continue reading
Evaluating an offshore team
There are five things I look for in evaluating an offshore team: Language – How well do they speak your language. Most can read and write (at times with the help of Google translate) but struggle with verbal communication. If … Continue reading
Agile Budgeting
People spend massive amounts of time creating and maintaing home budgets. Budgets are important, but an Agile approach will help save time. There are two basic classes for budgets: mandatory and discretionary expenses. Mandatory is anything that you have to … Continue reading
Timebox Your Life
When I wash my car, the first 30 minutes of washing with the hose and rag gets 99% of the dirt off my car. The next 2 hours where I wax, clean the windows, dress the tires, use q-tips to … Continue reading
Sprint Review Rules
The Sprint Review is the opportunity for the team to demonstrate their accomplishment for the last sprint. This meeting is open to everyone. Here are a few ground rules for Sprint Review Meeting: Everyone who worked on the project must … Continue reading
Video Chatting with Distributed Teams
I always prefer face-to-face meetings to teleconference meetings. In preparation for out next Sprint Planning Meeting, we tried to establish a reliable, decent quality, and free video conferencing solution between a PC and a MAC. Here are the results from … Continue reading
The Location of the Done Board
We decided to put the “Done Board” in the hallway or other public location in the office to allow other teams and departments to get more exposure to the projects being worked on. This succeeded in getting more visibility, however, … Continue reading
