Big Visible Charts
An article on Big Visible Charts by Ron Jeffries. You should display important project information not in some formal way, not on the web, not in PowerPoint, but in charts on the wall that no one can miss.
Knowledge
Articles, Blog Posts, Books and Quotes on Agile Project Management
When stand-up meetings are going wrong
Sometimes Daily Scrum Meeting are not working. The meetings don’t release the power of the team get together in a “Scrum”. This blog post contains a list of smells to detect bad daily stand-up meetings.
Leading or Managing
“Agile leaders lead teams, non-agile ones manage tasks. How many project managers spend hours detailing tasks into Microsoft Project and then spend more hours ticking off task completions? Unfortunately, many project managers like this task oriented-approach because it is concrete, definable, and completion seems finite. Leading teams, on the other hand, seems fuzzy, messy, undefinable, and never complete. So naturally some people gravitate to the easier – managing tasks.” Reference: “Agile Project Management”, Jim Highsmith, Addison-Wesley, Second Edition
Managing the Pipeline
The article “Managing the Pipeline” by Mary Poppendieck discuss the project planning and usage of resources. Exhorting workers to estimate more carefully and project mangers to be more diligent in meeting deadlines is not going to remove variation from projects. We need to change the rules of the game!
The Upside of Downsizing: Using Scrum and User Stories to Scale Down a Project
The article “<a href=”http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/article/file/12/UpsideOfDownsizing.pdf”>The Upside of Downsizing</a>” describes how a project was successfully downsized from 100 to 12 developers. To make such a dramatic adjustment the development process was switched to Scrum and user stories.
Project Management with Scrum
This post presents what is successful project management and reasons for the popularity of Scrum.
It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings
People who have experienced good stand-ups will generally know what can be done when things aren’t working well. This capability is obviously less likely for people with limited experience to reflect on. “It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings” is an attempt to partly compensate for inexperience by describing the benefits and consequences of common practices for daily stand-ups. These patterns of stand-ups are intended to help direct the experimentation and adjustment of new practitioners as well as provide points of reflection to experienced practitioners.