TED: Ric Elias: 3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed

This is old but I ran across it again today. Its a great TED talk. 3 Powerful lessons:

Book Review: Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn

I have been continuing to prepare to take a certification test to become a certified Scrum Master. I just finished reading Mike Cohn's Succeeding with Agile.

This book was recommended (and I am sorry, I cannot recall who recommended) along with Software in 30 Days (my review).

I started a hackpad of "notes" from these books. You can check it out here. My notes are a lot of direct pulls right from the text. Sometimes I have some of my own thoughts in there. One of the biggest learnings for me was the following (from page 308):

Scrum teams make testing a central practice and part of the development process rather than something that happens after the developers are "done". Rather than trying to test quality after a product has been built, we build quality into the process and product as it is being developed. W. Edwards Deming was an American professor and consultant best known for his work in Japan emphasizing the impact of quality on cost and productivity. He maintained that quality could be added to a product later. He wrote that we should "cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve quality. Improve the process and build quality into the product in the first place."

 This is something that we are trying to work through. I think we are doing a good job. We are due for a Quarterly release and we are going to miss our target by about a week. THIS IS A GREAT IMPROVEMENT. I will take a week versus a quarter any day.

If you are THINKING about deploying/embracing the Agile framework you should get this book. Cohn does a great job of laying out the adoption PROCESS. You can't just jump in. You need to think about some things. :)  I like the format he uses. He calls out objections. He addresses them with practical and deep experience.

TED: Bruce Feiler: Agile programming -- for your family

Interesting TED talk about about using the Agile process with your family.

Book Review: Software in 30 Days.

Has it really been more than two months since my last post??? What a slacker!

I just finished Software in 30 Days by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (the Godfather's of Scrum). Late last year, we shifted to an Agile software development framework. We went through some initial training and I was dubbed "Scrum Master".

Since then, I have decided to get certified by the above-mentioned Godfather's as a Scrum Master. This book was recommended as a good primer on Agile/Scrum. I completely agree. I wish we were given this book first. It was very helpful in clearing many things up that we were taught in training.

I started a hackpad of "notes" from the book. You can check it out here. My notes are a lot of direct pulls right from the text. Sometimes I have some of my own thoughts in there. One of the biggest learnings for me was the following:

p.105 Scrum is not an approach or process that can be modified to fit the existing organizational culture; the culture must change to enable Scrum.

We are trying to modify it. The rollout was a shotgunned. So we adopted what we could. We are pulling the rest in as we go in most cases. In one team that I am Scrum Master of - I shouldn't even really use the term "team" because it is not a team in the Agile sense.

One of the roles of Scrum Master is to mentor and coach and support the Agile framework. I am doing that for my teams. At least I hope that I am.

A great tool from the book is a lengthy "Definition of Done" table. Go to the hackpad and you will see it there. Our company was a start-up. We were bought by another start-up. Then we were bought by a mature company. This all happened within the span of one year by the way. But we were a "good enough" development team. Agile is a quality focused framework and we are trying to adopt it completely. Our definition of done versus the suggested is no where near as comprehensive. We have work to do.

Slowly. Slowly.

Pressfield's Videos On Long Tail Businesses

Here is a youtube link to a Playlist I created of Stephen Pressfield's and Shawn Coyne's series of short videos about long tail businesses. The videos are short, 2-3 minutes a piece. I love my Pressfield both the fiction and the non-fiction works. I liked this series. I love Shawn Coyne at the end of video 14 or 15 where he talks about working in a nice, safe, secure, 9-5 job and being a "muckity muck."

"It's just not fun."