In Part 1, I discussed the project system of agile. In this part, I’ll discuss the need for testing documentation. In a waterfall or phase-gate life cycle, we needed documentation because we might have had test developers and test executors. In addition, we might have had a long time separating the planning from the testing. […]
I spoke with a potential client last week. She said, “I’m waving the agile flag. But no one cares.” I wrote a Pragmatic Manager to sort through what I wanted to say to her. Read it at Feeling Alone on Your Agile Journey. If you feel stuck in the middle, or you’re alone, or you
Here’s something I see in many organizations: Management wants to “control and manage” the projects/efforts/work (whatever they call it) in the same way they did before the organization started agile. They want Gantt charts. They want commitments. They want assurances that the work will proceed in the same way they thought of it before the
In Stuck in the Middle, Part 1, I discussed possible management problems with agile. Those aren’t the only stuck problems I see. Sometimes, I see team problems. What if the teams are “almost agile”—they still have too many experts, their stories are too big, they don’t always deliver value on a regular basis? You know
In part 1, I addressed some management challenges with an agile transition. In part 2, I addressed some team issues. In this part, I’ll discuss why agile is a culture change and ways to consider a system change to agile. Agile looks something like this image. The responsible person (often called a product owner)
Over on Techwell, my monthly column is Agile Does Not Equal Scrum: Know the Difference. I wrote the article because I am tired of people saying “Agile/Scrum” as if Scrum was the only way to do agile. I use iterations, kanban, and the XP technical practices when I work with teams. I am not religious about
Is your agile transition proceeding well? Or, is it stuck in places—maybe the teams aren’t improving, maybe the people are multitasking, maybe you are tired and don’t know how you’ll find the energy to continue. You are the kind of person who would benefit from the Influential Agile Leader workshop. Gil Broza and I co-facilitate.
As more teams and organizations transition to agile, they discover something important about leadership. Leadership is part of everything we do in an agile project. It doesn’t matter if it’s development or testing, management or architecture. We need people with high initiative and leadership capabilities. That leads me to these questions: We need project management.
The big problem with hardware going agile is that the risks in hardware are not homogeneous. Hardware and mechanical engineering are on different cycles from each other, and they are each different from software. Even with each discipline, the risks are different when the teams collaborate together on one deliverable and when the entire program
Once you have a roadmap/product backlog for hardware, the teams need to know what to do and when. As a program manager, program product owner, or other interested party, you might want to know where the work is. The roadmap shows the big picture. The demos and team-based backlogs show the details and interdependencies One