Collaboration for the Sake of Collaboration
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.
It’s Okay to Miss A Daily Standup Once in A While
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.
Should You Hold a Project Kick-Off Meeting in Scrum?
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 […]
Telecommuting Teams with Agile Projects
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 […]
Confessions of a Bitcoin Skeptic
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, […]
The Environment You Work in Should not be Defined by Agile
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 […]
Help Wanted: Mindless Drones with No Personal Life
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 […]
Do You Have the Agile Mindset?
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. […]
My PSM I Exam Experience
I had considered the Professional Scrum Master exam for a while before finally taking it. When I did finally decide to go for it, it was 3 days of studying and then a test. My job at the time opened up their own internal Scrum Master certification (for […]
Distributed Agile Teams and the Telecommuting Naysayers
There are a lot of beliefs out there about telecommute/remote working environments that are just plain false. People seem to have the belief that if I cannot see you, we cannot possibly collaborate together efficiently. You want to talk to your coworker Bob, how would you do it? […]
Excel Visual Basic #5: Duplicating Sheets
66% Off Microsoft Excel Value Bundle In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to duplicate sheets from a template sheet. This is aimed at someone who knows the basics of VBA. I assume you know how to do a lot of things already and I […]
Big Five Personality Traits
The Big Five is a classification system of personality traits that many psychologists propose as being the principle traits of individual differences in personality (Carleton University, 2013). These traits may determine how an individual perceives the world and how they interact with it. While these may not be […]
Hacking Excel: Installing Selenium Basic
66% Off Microsoft Excel Value Bundle Selenium Basic is an add-on library for Excel Visual Basic. I am positive there are a lot more uses than I know of, but what I know about it makes it well worth learning. You can use it to build fancy automated […]
“I Don’t Want Problems, I Want Solutions” – Things Managers Say that Destroy a Culture of Teamwork
You want your team to work as a unified team, but for some reason, your efforts at building a team-driven culture seem to be failing. You put up all the posters, talk about the value of teamwork in meetings, created a reward program to honor those that go […]
Who is the Project Manager in Scrum?
That often depends on who you ask. Some will say it is the Scrum Master. Some will insist it is the Product Owner. Some people will insist there isn’t one – technically, by name only, there isn’t one. But I am here to tell you that A) There […]
