Category: Anti-patterns

The High-Wire Safety Net

Coach: “I’m concerned about the quality of delivery. The defect counts seem very high.”

Manager: “That’s why we have testers. To root out the defects.”

Coach: “I understand the value your testers are bringing. I’m referring to the frequency with which they bring it.”

Manager: “What difference does it make? The bugs are getting addressed.”

Coach: “The difference? It’s one thing to HAVE a safety net. It’s another thing to USE it.”

Real-Life Conversation
Continue reading “The High-Wire Safety Net”

Instilling a Sense of Urgency

“The team just isn’t demonstrating a sense of urgency.“

The manager looked earnestly at me across the table.

I took a deep breath.  “If I may clarify.  Is your wish that the team understands the urgency of the situation, or that they demonstrate a sense of … panic?” Continue reading “Instilling a Sense of Urgency”

Accentuate the Negative?

The instant message app chimed on my desktop. “How confident are you that we won’t find any more defects in testing?”, the department head asked. I glanced over at the task board, at the lone sticky note sitting in the “In Progress” section: “Architecture Review”, it read. I popped open the chat window, and responded, “100% sure. We are done with testing.” I watched the window for a moment as the message app informed me they were typing their reply. “Okay. Because I’m about to go report that to the senior managers.” “No problem,” I typed back. “See you at the demo, tomorrow.” Continue reading “Accentuate the Negative?”

Give a Boy a Hammer…

“If you give a boy a hammer, he will suddenly find that everything looks like a nail.”

In some ways, this is how Agile is being applied in the industry today. It doesn’t matter what problem you need to solve, hit that nail with a Hammer. You want to get better predictability? Hammer. Quicker time to market? Hammer. You want to improve employee morale? Hammer. Continue reading “Give a Boy a Hammer…”

Agile vs. Waterfall – Improved Performance is NOT Guaranteed

I am frequently asked to give a brief overview of Scrum to people who are unfamiliar with Agile concepts. In the course of giving those lessons, I almost always see a look of shock at the almost cavalier way that we agilists claim that Agile methods will give a better result than traditional methods. I like the look of shock. It shows that they’re paying attention. Continue reading “Agile vs. Waterfall – Improved Performance is NOT Guaranteed”

Weaponized Scrum (Part 1)

The following is an Experience Report I presented at Agile 2009 in Chicago (Part 1 of 4).

 

Abstract

Scrum provides a framework for managing agile development projects.  It encourages transparency at all times, which helps reinforce the cycle of trust that must exist between development teams, management and the customer.

Over the course of two years, our team had used Scrum to successfully deliver three revisions of our product with a degree of predictability that had been unattainable prior to adopting the agile method.

When the projected schedule of our next project didn’t align with the business needs of the organization, we found ourselves on the fast-track to conflict.  And we had given them all the ammunition they needed to turn our gesture of trust into a weapon of unimaginable destruction.

Continue reading “Weaponized Scrum (Part 1)”