Scrum is, by design, a “pull system” rather than a “push system”. The Scrum Team determines how much work they will pull in to each Sprint. The Product Owner determines what items are ready to be pulled in according to
Maintenance Patterns for Scrum Teams
Try as we might, software products are never perfect. Coding styles, legacy bugs, tight deadlines, changing frameworks and evolving languages all contribute to the error potential of complex systems. Scrum Teams are often faced with the choice of working on
A Simple Tool for Prioritizing Features
Prioritization of desired product functionality is often ad-hoc. Balancing the needs of all stakeholders is a challenge. A client recently shared a technique for gaining consensus on priorities and gave me permission to share it.
Impressions of Innovation Games
I attended the Innovation Games ® Consultants Master Class this week. Innovation Games are an implementation of serious games designed for marketing research. My expectation was that it would broaden my horizons to the world beyond the software project, out
Harmony by Song 4
I spent this week at Agile 2009 in Chicago. On the third night, after dinner with friends, I wandered over to the Music stage. There was a fellow playing one of the community guitars. I picked up another and we tried a