Archives for Scrum

Recognizing Software Debt Talk at Beyond Agile Meeting

A couple days ago I spoke at the Beyond Agile group meeting on the topic of “Recognizing Software Debt”. Early in the presentation we ran an exercise to get a feel for the effects of software debt that was original created by my friend, Masa Maeda. Here is a link to the exercise: http://www.agilistapm.com/understand-technical-debt-by-playing-a-game/ The [...]

Measuring the value of Agile: Forrester wants to hear from you

We recently spoke with Diego Lo Giudice at Forrester Research to share our views on how organizations are measuring the value of Agile. Diego is leading a research effort to uncover how both software vendors and enterprise IT groups are approaching this challenge. While  ”Working software is the primary measure of progress” is one of [...]

SeaSPIN Talk: Dollars and Dates Are Killing Agile

Last night I spoke at SeaSPIN on the topic “Dollars and Dates Are Killing Agile”. The focus of this talk is how we can speak more like business with the benefit of building organizations that are more supportive of adaptive planning, continuous improvement and team empowerment. If we do not speak the language of the [...]

Delving into Technical Debt – Cutter Article

The following is an except from the article authored by Israel Gat and myself named “Delving into Technical Debt”: Many of the findings and the recommendations we make in Cutter technical debt engagements are broadly applicable in concept, if not in detail. There is commonality in the nature of the hot spots we typically find, [...]

Puget Sound PMI Talk: Integrating Quality into Project Portfolio Management

Last week I did a talk in Lynnwood, WA with the Puget Sound PMI chapter on “Integrating Quality into Project Portfolio Management”. I feel that the slides were the best yet in providing specific indicators and understanding around the troubles with scaling Agile methods and in strategic decision-making at scale. Although stage, phase, or “gated” [...]

Interview with Spot On Business: Agility for the Long Haul

On November 1st at 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT) for about 45- to 60-minutes, Gil Broza will have me on as an interview guest on his series “Spot On Business” talking about “Agility for the Long Haul”. You may sign up at http://3pvantage.com/csterling/saveMySeat.php?ver=SC to be part of the conversation. Here is a brief description of the [...]

The Impediment Monkey Announcement – Bash Your Impediments!

We here at Agile Advantage are excited about a new product offering that we announced today called Impediment Monkey! This product goes along with our first product, AgileEVM, to help companies take advantage of Agile software delivery methods at scale for increased business value and reduced risk on project investments. Impediment Monkey will make removing [...]

Treating Software as an Asset

William Caputo wrote a passionate blog entry on why “Software is not an asset” here: http://www.williamcaputo.com/archives/000310.html Although I entirely agree with ideas discussed about refactoring and removal of code, I do not think that the blog entry substantiates his claim that software is not an asset. An asset is: Anything tangible or intangible that is [...]

Example Facilitation of Agile Adoption Strategy Session

More than a year ago I was training and consulting with a company that was deciding how to adopt Agile software development methods across all of their teams in the organization after some successful pilots. After a 2-day private Scrum course we decided to use the 3rd day to run a workshop on how to [...]

Towards a Push-Button Release

This presentation is being delivered as a 45-minute lecture and discussion for a company-wide tech talk today. It contains 2 case studies that revolve around moving to a push-button release that reduced the whole product company’s release cycles from 6 months to every week and the effects of a “No Defect” policy on a team’s [...]