Scrum Methodology

What is Agile ALM

Posted by ewok_bbq under Agile and Scrum, Agile Assessment, Agile Principles, Scrum Basics

I was asked to speak recently on a panel at the EclipseCon 2013 event in Boston.  The panel included the Co-Creator of Scrum, Ken Schwaber as well as Forrester Analyst Tom Grant. The link to the panel discussion is here

 

In preparation for the event I wanted to articulate to myself what does “Agile ALM” mean to me today. I wrote about Agile ALM a few years ago here but the definition and the article seemed a bit stale.  So here’s my new definition,

 

Agile ALM is the ability to build and deconstruct intelligent and actionable traceability through the life and retirement of an application leveraging the ethos of learning.

 

What do you think?

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Culture at the core

Posted by admin under Agile and Scrum, Agile Assessment, Agile Principles, Scrum Basics, Scrum Discussion, Scrum Transitions

Here’s a link to a number of blog posts I’ve been reading that have culture and transformation at the core.  I’ve aggregated my favorites.   Feel free to add to the list below in the comments section.  I’ll respond with what I think.

• Here’s an article I stumbled upon while reading LinkedIn.  It’s written by Jeff DeGraff a Professor from the US.  In it, he talks about culture change vs. culture growth and digs back into his Hungarian roots (yay!  He’s Hungarian just like me).   Have a read here http://linkd.in/U6rPjj
• If you are new to systems thinking, here’s a great blog post I read by John Wenger: bit.ly/10HzGec 
• What is DevOps anyways? With all the hype around Developer Operations or DevOps – this blogger reminds us to consider that it’s culture at the middle http://bit.ly/UfH0sX

Tags: lean, systemsthinking, transformation

Results of an Agile Assessment

Posted by admin under Agile and Scrum, Agile Assessment, Agile Principles, Scrum Basics, Scrum Discussion, Scrum Transitions

We recently set a team of consultants from my company to conduct a formal assessment of a medium sized financial firm’s an Agile capabilities. I’d like to share thew approach here. The team went on site to conduct interviews and observations in 5 areas –

• Value delivery
• Agile engineering
• Project Management
• Product management
• Environment and Organizational Culture

Also, the investigation took input on the demographics of the individual project being examined, the stakeholders involved and the competitive/regulatory environment in which the organization as a whole operates. Understanding the context in which an organization operates is crucial to understanding the optimal level of Agility, and thus, the plan of action.

Understanding the goals of the organization is particularly important. Not every axis needs to be top-ranked to achieve the company’s goals. In fact, on this particular assessment we found that only one needed urgent attention – Project Management. I’ll provide details in another post.

Tags: agile, Agile assessment, Agile Conference 2008, Scrum Basics, Scrum Methodology