Let’s offer four definitions starting with the dictionary one: 1 agile / adjective able to move quickly and easily. “Hilary was as agile as a monkey” —– —– 2 The ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent environment. —– —– 3 Agile is a set of values, principles, and practices designed to break down hieraRead More…
News today about a new book on pizza from the founders of Pizza Pilgrims – a company who have demonstrated amazing agility in lockdown. As the Rolling Stones sung in their lockdown hit Living in a Ghost Town: Life was so beautifulThen we all got locked down Pizza Pilgrims a pizzeria with 12 restaurants in London and one in Oxford responded to the lockdown by quickly staRead More…
Over the past few weeks we have been finding out from a number of agile teams how things have changed since March. What has worked better? What have been the pain points? Thanks to everyone who responded. Here are some of the main themes: Importance of establishing a working agreement Everyone I spoke to said their team used the first few days to either draft or re-draft how their team was Read More…
Had a discussion with a scrum master recently who had misunderstood slices. His team had a deliverable/epic which was estimated at 3 sprints. They’d come up with 3 slices. So you would anticipate 1 slice per sprint. Wrong. Turned out the slices weren’t vertical – I’m not sure they were even horizontal. Think of delivering slices of value in terms of this rainbow cake pictured. At the Read More…
Just before lockdown we ran a lively session with a group of scrum masters on tips for great retrospectives. To run an effective retrospective remember PARCELS PlanningWhere is it taking place? Get a room booked or a good space. Think about the time of day – late in day retros often get different results to pre-lunch onesWho is going to facilitate? What format are you going to use? Is tRead More…
As Agile consultants we are sometimes asked for advice how to approach starting something new. How should you go about it? There is a numbered step approach: Confirm that you have a meaningful effort to work on.Gather a team.Assure that the team is on the same page, and agree on a definition of Done.Prepare a Product Backlog of user stories (and other work).Work on Iteration Zero.Start DailRead More…
We ran a great session recently where we were looking at problems facing two specific disciplines. Without going into the problem specifics, we used our own variation on the Agile Speed Dating retrospective, as follows: Room set up with individual tables with 2 chairs facing each other (speed dating style)Group split into two with one discipline representative one side of table, discipline twoRead More…