Author Archive

Transitioning to Scrum: The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat from MICHAEL A DE LA MAZ on Vimeo.
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Why do agile transformations (almost always) fail? from MICHAEL A DE LA MAZ on Vimeo.
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Below is a list of short (fewer than 1000 word) agile articles that substantially improved my understanding of agile.  This list can be edited here: http://twtpick.in/56.  At this link, articles can be upvoted, downvoted, and added.  Over time, if you participate, this list might become something like a consensus view of great, short articles...
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To understand others and to be understood.  To be open to the beam of light that emanates from another’s soul.  To be connected deeply, so that we understand the feelings and needs of others and they understand our feelings and needs.  To sense someone’s “no” even when they’re saying “yes.”  These are some of...
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I learned today that James “Jaime” Phillips, an outstanding member of the Boston Scrum community, recently passed away.  I met Jamie a couple of years ago when he was working on spreading Scrum values and practices at Picis.  Whenever I saw Jamie at Scrum events in the Boston area he was always happy, enthusiastic,...
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According to one theory, there are seven universal human emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. At work and sometimes in everyday life these emotions are filtered because of social conditioning. In the West, men are not supposed to feel fear or sadness.  Men who express fear or sadness are called wimps.  Women are...
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Continuous means “uninterrupted in time, sequence, substance, or extent”. Continues improvement sounds so good, doesn’t it? But that is not the sort of improvement experienced by organizations going over to Scrum. In my intro to Scrum classes, students create different types of paper airplanes, measure the distance that they fly, and then modify...
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Can any evidence be marshaled or any argument made which would cause you to conclude that Scrum is not valuable? If you answer yes, then you have a testable belief in the value of Scrum. If no, then you have a non-testable belief in the value of Scrum. I note that here is...
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A manager who is considering implementing Scrum might say, “I’m concerned about the loss of predictability in Scrum. Right now I can predict what the team is going to be doing six months from now because I have a Gantt chart that tells me what they are going to be doing. But once...
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There is a certain pattern of action we humans are almost addicted to. I say “addicted” because we keep acting this way, even though the pattern almost always fails. This pattern of action often shows up in Scrum implementations in large organizations. This structure has three components: a list of nice...
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