Category Archives: scrum

Elizabeth McClellan: An artist’s interpretation of scrum

Artist, illustrator and graphic facilitator Elizabeth McClellan is one of my favorite people, proving as she always does that the kind of work we do here at Agile Learning Labs–and what our clients do when they develop software–is as much art as it is business. Last June, as Chris blogged recently, Elizabeth recorded everything that happened in one of our Certified Scrum Master Workshops in her inimitable style. This week, she did the same for our Certified Product Owner course in Redwood City. Click on each image to see it in all its detail and glory.
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Agile Publishing: Lessons from academia in getting it right

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I am always looking for others who are experimenting in the arena of agile publishing, as we are doing with our side venture, Dymaxicon, and I ran across a fascinating article today on a Bryn Mawr college blog called Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education. The article is by Rebecca Pope-Ruark (affectionately nicknamed RPR by her students), a professor of Writing and Publishing at Elon University in North Carolina who learned about scrum from her geek husband and decided to try using it to teach collaboration skills to her students, who would be working on some publishing projects. (Since it’s academia, the blog post is also co-authored by several of her students–apparently publish or perish extends to blogging now.)

I loved the description of how the students viewed “collaboration” before the project:
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5 Reasons Scrum Helps Teams Become High-Performing Faster

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Scrum masters and product owners know how hard it is to get their team to become high-performing. They can rest assured that they’re on the right track. Scrum helps teams become high-performing faster than other work methods. The reason is simple. Becoming high-performing is baked into the scrum recipe. In my experience coaching agile teams, I have observed over and over that teams that use scrum go from forming, storming, norming and ultimately to high-performing more quickly and reliably than teams that don’t. Here are five reasons why:
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Agile in California with QA in China?

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After visiting a start-up that is adopting scrum, I received the following email from “B” and I’d like to share the answer here. As you will see, they are trying to be more agile, and wondering how to deal with their remote quality assurance team.

Hi, Chris,

Great agile session today. I learned a lot from you. Here are my two questions:
What is the impact of agile to the remote team? We have an outsourced QA team in China.
For the QA testing, how often should developers deliver a stable build to QA for testing?
Thanks,

B.

With part of the team in California and part in China, the biggest source of trouble will be communication. Of course, this is true even if you are not trying to work in an agile way.
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What is a Scrum Product Owner

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As a scrum product owner, you are a visionary, representative, editor, and investment manager.

As the team’s visionary, you are the person who knows more than anyone else what this product can, and will be. Just as Michelangelo could see the statue in the stone, you can see your end product in the needs of your users. You know who will use this product, who will buy it, and why.
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Video of “The Elements of Scrum” Book Release Party

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An extraordinary agilist and friend, Harold Shinsato, captured this video at the release party for our new book “The Elements of Scrum.” My favorite moment is when Hillary explains why they chose not to capitalize scrum and how agile is not a noun. Enjoy!

ScrumMaster vs scrum master: What do you think?

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Chris and I just finished the first draft of our book, The Elements of Scrum, and will be publishing a “beta” paperback by February, just in time for Agile Open Northwest, of which we are a proud sponsor.

One of the biggest remaining debates we’re having is over capitalization. After great deliberation, we’ve chosen not to use agile as a noun in the book (e.g., “In Agile we do it this way…” or “Agile is about…”). In my humble writer’s opinion, when we “thingify” agile by hardening it into a proper noun, the term loses a little bit of it of its transformational power. We want help the word to remain an adjective, a powerful, dynamic descriptor, so we’ve chosen not to nounify it. We’ve also decided not to capitalize it.
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Who needs certification when you can get this awesome ScrumMaster button?

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We are a bit enamored of swag over here at Agile Learning Labs. Witness our latest effort, this adorable 3″ Scrum Master button you can wear on your conference tee or use to decorate your ~~cubicle~~ scrum room.

The only way to get one is to attend one of our trainings, public or private. If you are dying to get your mits on one of these puppies in time for the holidays, sign up for our December 4-5 Certified Scrum Master training with Chris Sims and Jeff Mckenna, and you can have it all–Scrum Alliance certification and your very own piece of Agile Learning Labs bling!

Training The Trainers

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Agile Learning Labs is partnering with Tobias Mayer to put on a brand new series of workshops aimed at trainers, coaches and advanced practitioners of Agile. We’re calling it Creative Edge: Training & Coaching for Coaches & Trainers. Catchy, eh? The Scrum Alliance is generously sponsoring the series, so there will naturally be special pricing for members.
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Kevin Thompson: “Deep Scrum”

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We'd like to welcome Kevin Thompson's Deep Scrum to our blogroll. Why do we like Kevin's blog? Because of irreverent writing like this, from a post titled When Scrum is Too Much:

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