Three key success factors for ‘going agile’
When companies approach us about ‘going agile’ they often what to know what needs to be in place before they start. Most often companies believe they need to start with a new project. Our approach is...
View ArticleExpo:QA Conference
We’ve just returned from 10 days in Europe where we attended two conferences. The first was Expo:QA in Madrid. It was our first time at this conference, although the conference has been running for 10...
View ArticleProduct Owner Camp
We recently attended the PO Camp in Switzerland (#POCampCH). The camp started with a 1 day masterclass which was jointly run by us (Sam & Karen) and Steve Holyer. The title of the masterclass was...
View ArticleOur web life in 2014
At the start of 2014 we looked at how our website was doing – comparing 2012 and 2013. Here is that blog post: http://www.growingagile.co.za/2014/01/web-life/ We decided to do it again, so here is the...
View ArticleDo you know your stakeholders?
If you are lucky, you have direct access to your customers. In our experience very few Product Owners have this luxury – especially if they are in large organisations. Most Product Owners we come...
View ArticleImprove your meetings in just 5 minutes
How often do you take 5 minutes after a meeting or training session to reflect on what happened? After every meeting we have with a client or workshop we talk about what happened and reflect. We wonder...
View ArticleAgile Hotline – Is agile more efficient than waterfall?
Question Recently someone asked for advice about a debate he was having with a co-worker about whether agile and Scrum can work in any software development scenario. The co-worker argued that it...
View ArticleInteruptions, Support, Business as usual – how do these work in scrum
Most teams starting out with Scrum understand their backlog and what we called planned work. This is work that everyone grooms together and fully understands. Then there is all the other stuff! We tell...
View ArticleImproving user stories
Recently we worked with a client that was looking to improve their agile requirements. Although they were creating user stories, they didn’t feel like they captured enough details in the user stories,...
View ArticleBook Review: The Nature of Software Development
I bought Ron Jeffries’ latest book: The Nature of Software Development as soon as it came out, and then as usually happens I forgot about it, hidden away on my kindle. I finally got around to reading...
View ArticleInvoicing without timesheets
We recently worked with a client who do outsourced software development. They were looking to start using Scrum with a bit more discipline than they had in the past with their own home grown...
View ArticleAssessment – How agile is your testing?
We often see agile teams that have adopted the ceremonies and language of Scrum, but in reality they do waterfall in 2 week increments. One of the easiest ways to notice this is to take a look at how...
View ArticleThe Four Day Work Week
About a year ago, we made a fairly major decision at Growing Agile. We realised we were too busy, so we decided to work less. We committed to only working 4 days a week. The idea was we would take...
View ArticleAgilePath.me
Hello and welcome to 2016! Karen and I are hard at work setting up AgilePath.me – be sure to go sign up and be notified when it is ready! This is part of our crazy goal of inspiring 1 million agile...
View Article2016 Scrum Master and Agile Coach Salary Survey
The salary survey for South Africa is back! Agile has grown quite a bit since last year so we are hoping to get many more responders to this survey – please pass on the details to all those you know!...
View ArticleThe role of testers in Agile
In November we gave a keynote at Agile Testing Days, which is now officially our favourite conference ever! The organisers and attendees are so much fun and all seem to be really passionate about...
View ArticleFinal retrospective for a team
Usually a retrospective is to look at the past and then think of a way to improve your team’s process going forward. But what if this is your team’s last sprint together? Do you have a retrospective?...
View ArticleScrumMasters Competencies
Recently a ScrumMaster at a client of ours sent me an email asking for help in creating a list of ScrumMaster competencies to use in recruiting of ScrumMasters. I asked the ScrumMaster to send me their...
View ArticleESVP Retrospective Checkin Activity
When coaching new ScrumMasters we often get asked what people should do if teams don’t want to come to meetings like the retrospective, or standups. Our answer is usually to ask if participants are...
View ArticleTeam Agreements
When helping teams get started with Scrum we recommend that they create a set of Working Agreements. These are helpful because they define what behaviour is expected by the team from it’s members....
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