Agile Newsletter - 30 Oct
Carlo Kruger
Oct. 30, 2012
The Agile News you need
Scaling
Our first contribution is from Richard Stobart, who has found an interesting article on scaling agile in the UK government. UK.GOV was delivered by 140 people in 14 teams. Some valuable ideas on how to monitor progress and how to organise at the portfolio level.
Retrospective Check-in
Austin Fagan has found a great rundown of activities you can use as the start of your retrospective. This assumes you’re using the 5 stage retrospective plan outlined by Diana Larson and Esther Derby in their great book, “Agile Retrospectives”.
The Tao of Agile
Another from Austin; what must have been a fairly lengthy lightning talk by Fabio Armani at XP2012 discusses the holistic vs. reductionist mindset and how first Lean and later Agile has helped us move beyond this mindset.
Complexity in Agile
Ben Wong has found this simple introduction to the Cynefin Framework. The framework has made a significant impact on the Lean and Agile conversations since CALMAlpha earlier this year. It has particular value as a model for organisational change. But, Ben has also found this workshop from Liz Keogh where she uses the model in tandem with Deliberate Discovery and Real Options to help teams discover where the need or moment of commitment happens.
Agile Product Ownership
Carlo Kruger was particularly impressed by this short presentation on Product Ownership from Henrik Kniberg. There is also a text version on the page for those of you allergic to video, but his hand drawn video really communicates some of the concepts that many people seem to have trouble with.
The Life of the Agile Tester
Sam and Karen at Growing Agile gave a talk this past week on how the role of a tester plays out in an agile team. Lots of practical advice and a discussion on what life is like without an issue tracker!
It’s Ordered, not Prioritised!
Sarah Beck has found a great follow up to Jim Coplien’s discussion of the recent changes to the Scrum Guide which uses the term “ordered” as opposed to what was used before, “prioritised”.
Poor IT delivery may not be our fault?
Linda Rising, noted author, gave the keynote address at Agile Connect 2011, where she discusses how our ancestors might be responsible for our poor estimates and IT delivery.