Articles on Scrum and Agile Project Management
When an approach or a technology reach the hype level, then every IT solutions provider include it in the description of what it offers. This is today the case for Agile and Scrum in software development. This is why the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) has worked on a document to help US Department of Defense (DoD) agencies to detect Agile bullshit.
The Product Owner is a key component of Scrum teams as the role a major influence on software development projects. It is however not always possible for the Agile team to get access to a full-time qualified Product Owner. This is why Marcelo Leonetti discusses in this article some situations where a Product Owner proxy could help Scrum teams solve some problems.
How do you assess your skills as an Agile coach? An Agile coach herself, Karen Greaves proposes to define the coaching activity using 5 areas and 15 different items, a perspective that could naturally be adapted to your own context. This simple tool allows the coaches to reflect about their work and plan improvements.
As organizations transition to an Agile approach, the management and leadership styles must also change to adapt themselves to the new values and behaviors. In this article, Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová explains how an Agile Leadership concept can help leaders to be effective in an Agile organization.
The Scrum Glossary defines the Sprint Goal as “a short expression of the purpose of a Sprint, often a business problem that is addressed”. In this article Özmen Adibelli provides a facilitation meeting structure and some tips on how to facilitate a session about a controversial topic like the Sprint Goal.
In Agile project management approaches like Scrum, the role of the product owner is fundamental to deliver value to the customer. The product owner role has high responsibility and requires many different skills. In a series of posts titled “Thoughts about hiring Product Owners”, Viktor Cessan discusses some product owner hiring anti-patterns and shares some tips and questions that could help improve your product owner hiring experience.
Using an Agile project management framework like Scrum does not avoid the problems of right-sizing the team. What do you do when you need to increase the numbers of people involved? When is the team too big? How to split an existing Scrum team? In this article, Cynthia Kahn provides some tips on how to assess and manage the growth of Scrum teams.