Kanban, the cucumber way

Nothing is fixed and any process, any method should be (must be?) flexible enough to take into account its context (without sacrificing its values). Briefly, we must be able to adapt any practices to its environment.

For the project I'm currently working, we needed a better method to track and share tasks. Our team is hybrid and we relied on the Kanban that we sprinkled with a small amount of context.

Here's how we did it

Say it in Agile ...

A vocabulary cheat sheet by SM

A Scrum team includes a ...

Product owner who represents the business yet works closely with the team and is the owner of ...

Product backlog, consisting of features stated as ...

User stories, usually hand-written index cards that say things like "As a user , I need X to accomplish Y" and are sized in ...

Story points stated as numbers or even T-Shirt sizes (S, M, L, XL). The PO chooses which stories will be included in the ...

Sprint backlog, the to-do list for the next...

Sprint, or iteration, 1-4 weeks development cycle. The sprint is shepherded (not "managed") by the ...

Scrum Master, a team member whose role is to take care of and run interference for the ...

Self-organized team of developers, who independently decide which tools and processes to use, often including...

Unit testing, developers-written tests that are the cornerstone of ...

Test-driven development. Team may also use ...

Extream programming practices like ...

Pair programming in which two developers works side by side at a single machine, and ...

Refactoring, or the continual improvment of a design over many iterations. Another common practice is the ...

Daily stand-up, a brief meeting in which team members say what they have done, what they're working on, and what's stopping them, referring to their ...

Task board, which is always on a wall (not a spreadsheet !), alongside other "information radiators" like a ...

Burn up chart to track work accomplished or a ...

Burn down chart to track work yet to be done. These charts are essential in determining the ...

Velocity of the team, or how many story points they can accomplish per sprint. These are a big part of the ...

Sprint retrospective. This is the team's opportunity to "inspect and adapt" by identifying best practices and future action items. The retrospective is separate from the ...

Sprint review, in which the team demonstrate working software to the business' stakeholders. That's right. It's all about ...

Working software !!! 

Agile Team Values

Derived from Exploring Scrum : The Fundamentals by Dan Rawsthorne and Doug Shimp.

Openness

There should be no secrets between/amongst team members about things relevant to production; the team members should be open to suggestions from others.

Focus

Everything that the team does must have a focus; and the team members must focus on what is important in everything they do.

Commitment

The team makes and keeps its commitments/agreements, and the team members must have commitment to the team and the product itself.

Respect

Team members believe that people are always doing the best they can do at any given moment; thy respect all points of view, including those of their stakeholders

Courage

The team must have the courage to make reality visible - the courage to say no - and team members must have the courage to be open with each other.

Visibility

The team must make the current state of the product visible; that is, the details of production belong to the team, but the state of the product is available to all.

Sense of Humour

Since everyone is always doing the best they can, everyone needs a sense of humour; if we can't laugh at the things we do, we'd have to cry.

Courtesy of SM

Thanks Conficius

There are a bunch of time, a famous Chinese guy named Confucius wrote something like this :

Tell me and I forget,
Show me and I remember,
Involve me and I understand

It may seem a little strange like that, but the next time you need to explain something to one of your colleagues and / or friends (not necessarily incompatible), think about how you do it and realize that this choice will have an impact on how your explanation will be understood or not.

Imply more than say or show is the cornerstone of successful management because it is the key of a good communication.

The 23 rules for a Product Owner

The role of the Product owner is the more difficult to endorse but also to understand.

The following 23 commandments will help you to understand what to do and what not to do when you are product owner

As a Product owner ...

What is a Scrum Product Owner

You are a visionary, representative, editor, and investment manager.

The 17 rules for a Scrum Master

During the summer of 2012 I participated to a Scrum training done by Jeff McKenna and the Ukrainian company SM . It's where I discovered the 17 commandment of the Scrum Master and I want to share it with you.

So he it is.