Pedro Manuel Faria is the CEO of a company called In Forming, a spin-off company of Famousgadget Lda. Pedro was kind enough to let me interview him in a rather unconventional fashion, through LinkedIn messaging. Our main discussion topic was the new project management software his company was […]
Phone conferencing can be tricky to navigate. Without really seeing everyone you lack some visual clues as to when someone else may have something to add to the discussion. This can sometimes create scenarios where some people dominate the call and others are never heard from. As […]
To understand Kanban, you must first learn what it is and is not. I covered some of this in What is Kanban?. To sum up that article, there are two different Kanbans – we will call them Lean Kanban and Agile Kanban. Agile Kanban is too often confused […]
Untrained staff, new employees, inexperienced technical resources. If you have been a project manager (predictive or adaptive) for any duration of time, you have had to work with someone who lacked some knowledge in a needed area. You have probably also had tight deadlines and not enough time […]
The Scrum Master is one of three recognized roles in Scrum. They are the servant-leader for the Scrum team, which means they serve the team by working to provide what the team needs to complete their job. This could be working to make sure they have the right […]
Lean, while primarily known for manufacturing, has many tools and ideas that can apply to many industries that have no manufacturing component. Services have wastes, business and operational processes can have waste, software engineering and development has waste… you can find waste everywhere. In Lean, efficiency falls into […]
There are many sources available that discuss Agile and Agile principles. One of the most well-known is the Manifesto For Agile Software Development, which is commonly known as the Agile Manifesto. This includes the 12 Principles behind the manifesto. I personally have some issues with the Agile Manifesto, […]
A joke I heard once was that in an 8 hour day, Agile has 7 hours of meetings and 1 hour of work. There can be some truth to it if you let it happen.
Agile is supposed to be strict. I am not saying miss a daily standup because you don’t feel like doing it, I am saying there are situations where letting some team members not attend would be acceptable.
The answer is yes you should hold a kick-off meeting. But why? The kick-off meeting gives everyone a chance to get together (team members, stakeholders, customers, etc.) and discuss the project. You can make sure everyone is informed of their expected role in the project It gives you […]
Article on the PMI ProjectManagement.com Knowledge Base: Telecommuting Teams with Agile Projects It may seem counter to the “rules” of agile, but distributed, telecommuting agile teams can be more effective than their colocated peers, and most of what you have to do to be successful are things you […]
I am a Bitcoin skeptic, a skeptic of all cryptocurrencies actually. I am certainly not an expert, but I have kept my eye on Bitcoins since I first heard about them in 2010. I found the technology behind cryptocurrencies interesting. Not the mining aspect, that just seemed silly, […]
Originally published as a guest post on http://techotics.com/agile-environment/. Some have called co-location common sense among Agile practitioners, I state that it should be common sense that the requirement is not actually very Agile. What is more agile; picking a particular city and only having access to employees from that […]
I get it. There are some bad employees out there. Sometimes those employees are just that way and you cannot do anything about it. Other times, you create them. Posting a want-ad like the one shown here, and maybe I am wrong, seems like a sure way to […]
I make the mistake sometimes, when someone asks me what they think about their particular industry and how can they adopt Agile, of thinking of different Agile frameworks and trying to find one that fits for them. This is probably not the best way to approach Agile adoption. […]
Agile-Mercurial 