Author Archives: Chris Sims

What Makes Agile Projects Succeed? – Agile Open California

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Agile Open California LogoI hosted the ever-popular ‘What makes agile projects succeed?’ session at Agile Open California this year. As was the case last year, turnout was strong and the lessons learned from many teams were shared in a short period of time. In under 90 minutes the group generated and ranked a list of nearly 40 factors that had been key to the success of agile projects that they had been involved with. We used the Group Wisdom Without Groupthink technique to accomplish this feat. The list below presents, in order, what the assembled group considered to be the most important ingredients to the success of the agile projects.

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Not a Bad Morning

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I woke up this morning with a 30th-story view of the Charles River. I finished up my latest article for InfoQ. Off I walked to get checked in for SD Best Practices, where I’ll be doing workshops on active listening and giving feedback. I reconnected with friends I made in Chicago, at Dr. Dobbs Architecture and Design World. Then there was just enough time to reconnect with Joel Spolsky, over a cup of coffee at Espresso Royal, before we had to run back to the conference so that he could deliver the lunch keynote. His presentation got plenty of hearty laughs, while making some serious points about how to make people love your software.

Life is good!

Cheers,

Chris

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The Power of Done

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It seems so simple, but having a well, and widely, understood definition of “done” is one of the most powerful contributors towards the success of an agile project. Lately there has been a lot of discussion about this idea, and it prompted me to write this story for InfoQ.

What is your team’s definition of “done”? Leave a comment and share it!

Cheers,

Chris

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Story-Focused Standups

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A widely accepted agile practice is the daily standup meeting, in which each team member shares:

  • What they have done since the previous standup
  • What they expect to achieve by the next
  • Anything that is getting in their way

Mike Cohn recently examined variations that shed additional light on the progress being made toward completing each user story. I wrote about it for InfoQ, and you can find the story here.

Cheers,

Chris

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Agile Success Rate: Better than 90% says survey

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The results of Version One’s 3rd annual ‘State of Agile’ survey are in. According to the survey, agile practices are being used more widely and with impressive results. More than half of the respondents indicated that 90 – 100% of their organization’s agile projects have been successful, and 93% indicated that agile practices had enhanced their ability to respond to changing priorities.

Read the full article here on InfoQ.

Cheers,

Chris

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Scrum-a-licious Morning

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I just had the pleasure of leading a half-day Agile/Scrum workshop for Autodesk. The goal was to do some education and get some ideas generated as to how this company might adopt agile practices. The group was smart, curious, and very engaged.

Several years ago I read The Autodesk File, a book about how this company was founded, and how it grew to be a major software company. It was neat to walk around the offices, knowing how it all began.

Talk about a great way to spend the morning. 🙂

Cheers,

Chris

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