This blog is somewhat of a response to a comment on my JIT posting.

I really like The Goal and think the Theory of Constraints (TOC) is brilliant.   I believe it can be applied to software development in two ways.  One is very valuable and the other must be dealt with with great care.  First, the one to be careful.

Hi all.  I’m on “vacation” in San Diego this week.  I’m kind of splitting time between vacation, reflecting on business and writing my Lean-Agile Anti-Patterns book. Today,  I wanted to discuss the difference between what I think are normal Scrum practices and what could be called “Lean-Scrum”, or what we, at Net Objectives, call Lean-Agile. I hope to write a blog entry each day of this week, so please stay tuned.

Post-Agile Scrum (audio of the webinar)

The Agile Manifesto and the Agile movement have ushered in a new way of developing software. Today, many practitioners are discovering limitations to the usual approach to Agile which focuses mostly on local teams and projects. This limited focus developed as a reaction to heavy processes and teams' inability to make their own commitments. This resulted in many leading Agile practitioners to advocate an approach to "let the team figure it out," going so far as to state that the beauty of the Agile approach (such as Scrum) is that it avoids any kind of prescriptive formula. Yes, prescriptive formulas can be dangerous; however, having a set of principles to guide Agile practices can be extremely useful. Moreover, incorporating Lean management practices are critical for extending the capabilities of an organization using Agile methods.

Today, what is required is helping the entire enterprise become Agile. What is an Agile enterprise? An enterprise that can respond quickly to customer, environment and internal changes to create a competitive advantage. This requires much more than merely trying to apply practices that work for local teams to the entire enterprise - that approach is too simplistic. This Agile Enterprise-perspective is one of the biggest differences between current Agile practitioners and those going beyond Scrum.

These and other questions are pondered by Alan Shalloway in a webinar on Post-Agile Scrum, presented January 24, 2008. The webinar is available to registered users of the Net Objectives website for 30 days and to Net Objectives customers always. However,  read more »

 Scrum and Management: Planning and Focusing

Over the last several years, teams of developers have been trying Agile and getting success at their level. Now, management is getting engaged, both to figure out how to do this across divisions and the enterprise, as well as how to do a better job in less-than-simple situations that most enterprises face.

There have been notable examples where things did not go as well as expected when teams face complexity, where the fit is not exactly good, where maybe the initial approach taken was just too simplistic. It is management's job to help teams look at ways to improve.

This is why at conferences, we are encountering more and more mid-level managers. And they are asking very different sorts of questions than technical, development teams ask. This is stimulating and exciting. Clearly, Agile is beginning to enter the mainstream as a better way to manage software product development.

In this podcast, we will touch on two topics Alan that are concerns for management: Release Planning and Focus.  read more »

I have been accused of two things in the last few days. One is true, the other isn't. The one that is true is that I'm always looking for what's missing and not acknowledging enough what has been done. The one that isn't true is that I don't like Scrum. Although as CEO of a global training/consulting company I feel I need to look for what is missing, I also need to praise and acknowledge the good things around me. Something I don't do this as much as I could.  read more »

 Announcing Scrum Certification by Net Objectives 

Scrum Certification by Net Objectives is a new program by Net Objectives to help the industry and especially our clients have a reliable, repeatable, and meaningful process by which to assess the competency of individuals and teams to be on a Scrum Team, to be a Scrum Master, or to be a Product Owner. This podcast announces the program and the motivations behind it, including the following:

• What this program is and what it covers
• The motivation behind this program
• Why the industry needs certification in Scrum
• What we mean by “certification”
• What certification will involve
• When it will be ready

The need for this is borne out of our experience having trained almost 20,000 people in Scrum and working with many major corporations rolling out Scrum, what people need to get proficient with Scrum.

 read more »

Alan Shalloway has started a regular series of webinars on Lean and Agile topics. The recordings of these webinars are available to registered users of the www.netobjectives.com website in the Resources Page for 30-days and to students and customers after that.

Here are some webinar recordings on these topics:

Lean-Agile and the Process-Innovation Pendulum

Alan was the keynote speaker at the SQE Better Software Conference in Las Vegas this year. Conferences are great for stirring up ideas and generating insights. For this podcast, I wanted to continue the series on Lean Anti-Patterns, sharing some more from what we are learning as we write this book. But you cannot always control a conversation. One of the hardest things to know as a facilitor is when to re-focus an individual or a group and when to let the ideas flow. You want the ideas to emerge and you want them to create the result. Today, I went with the passion, letting him share because I knew we’d get back to the other topic another day.

What do I mean by a silver person? Well, that's the Scrum Alliance version of a silver bullet.

Net Objectives is one of the biggest Scrum training providers in the world. We have one trainer who estimates he's trained 350 people at one company in Scrum over the last couple of years. None of this training is ScrumMaster Certification training, however. Why? Because why would a company need 350 ScrumMasters? They need 350 Scrum team members. Doing CSM training for all of them is comparable to sending all team members to PM training. Kind of like a football team. Do you send everyone to a school to teach everyone how to coach? Or do you send them to a school where they all learn how to play football? Tobias Mayer, a former CST, writes about this in his blog entry as well "The Problem With CSM Courses".

 read more »