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Check out scrumjobs.com – a website for Scrum Masters, Scrum team members and Product Owners

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:55:57 +0000

Dear Scrum community, Boris Gloger has published a brand new website where Scrum Masters, Scrum team members and Product Owners can search for Scrum jobs offered by companies using Scrum. Check out scrumjobs.com at http://scrumjobs.com/

A retrospective about a dead Scrum Master (Part 1: Once upon in time)

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:44:43 +0000

Sleeping sheepdog on flickr by alexvalentine, http://www.flickr.com/photos/41006494@N00/379686989)

Once upon in time, a Scrum Master was asked by a large company to help introduce Scrum in one of their most important and strategic projects. The Scrum Master asked for the company’s motivation to use Scrum and was told that a project which was kicked-off 6 months ago wasn’t showing much progress and that the bosses wanted to see results and that the deadline was already looming. So the project sponsors decided to adapt to a more promising approach about which they have heard good things – Scrum. If Scrum was successful, it was planned to apply it to all projects in the department.

The Scrum Master explained that Scrum is not a silver bullet but – if applied correctly – a great way to help the team improve by helping it focus on the right things, by creating transparency and by doing so surfacing issues which keep the Scrum team from being more productive. The project sponsors liked what they heard and a few days later, the Scrum Master joined the project.

to be continued… part 2

Scrum Ignorance: “Scrum does not work because…”

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:36:09 +0000

Photo by Flickr user "johnscotthaydon" http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnhaydon/3252135212/

“Scrum does not work and I won’t even give it a try!”
— anonymous ignorant

This collection of all the ignorant statements I have come across since I have been using Scrum should help you reply to similar statements in case you will ever be confronted with them:

Scrum & Agile “must-reads”

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:26:29 +0000

In this post, you can find a list of books about and related to Scrum. This post itself is highly incremental so I will add more recommendations as well as some reviews every now and then.

Happy reading! In case you would like to discuss any of these books, please feel free to contact me by adding a comment to this post.

“Scrum and XP from the trenches” – must-read book about Scrum

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:28:09 +0000

At the time I was working on my CSP application, I found this terrific book written by Henrik Kniberg about his experience and lessons learned using Scrum and XP. You can download a free version of “Scrum and XP from the trenches” from InfoQueue.

Scrum Ignorance: “Scrum is waterfall because you are working on stories consecutively”

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:19:16 +0000

Waterfall Palenque Mexico by Flickr user "zoutedrop" http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoutedrop/2297190795/

“Scrum is waterfall because you are working on stories consecutively!”
– anonymous ignorant

Of all the ignorant statements I’ve heard so far, this is my new favorite one. Obviously this one is dead wrong because for each story, you complete analysis, design, implementation, testing, and documentation (see figure 1) before you move on to the next story whereas in waterfall, you first complete the analysis for all requirements, then design for all requirements, then implementation, and so on and so forth (see figure 2). So the big difference between Scrum and waterfall is that you deliver small chunks of value to the customer and users with every story while in waterfall, you deliver value only at the very end of the process (and only if you are lucky and the requirements haven’t change since you captured them in the initial analysis phase… But that’s another story).

: figure 1: Agile

figure 2: waterfall