If continuous flow assembly is the preferred way to make cars, then why not software? — Have you ever seen a car assembly plant that produces cars in discrete Sprints that begin and end? As in, at the start of a two week period, the team commences to build a new batch of cars, and completes only those cars by the end of the Sprint? No…

If, like me, you assume that Scrumban is a hybrid between Scrum and Kanban, then you’re mistaken. It’s actually something different. — In the past, I’ve struggled to understand Scrumban. Most definitions say “Scrumban combines elements of Scrum and Kanban”. But which elements? Which parts of Scrum and which parts of Kanban do you need to use to qualify as doing Scrumban? Is Scrumban: A. Scrum with a Kanban board (isn’t this…

Despite claiming to be Agile, many organizations still get drawn into planning features in a Waterfall manner. Why is that? And what can we do about it? — In principle, applying Agile software development should be simple: Build an increment. Test that increment. Learn what needs to change. Feed that knowledge back into step 1 and repeat. There are two aspects of this process that fundamentally differentiate Agile from Waterfall:

Just defining a strategy is not a guarantee of success. It needs to supported by organizational structure, culture, personal incentives and underlying beliefs in order to thrive. — I usually write about Agile practices and common dysfunctions, but I’ve started to notice a trend. I’ve found that often the cause of many Agile teams failures or persistent struggles are not within the teams themselves, but rather due to arduous external constraints that they are forced to operate under…

A novel way to harness all three that works to combine their strengths in a concurrent and intertwined fashion. — The Recap Previously, I wrote about the similarities and differences between Agile, Lean and Design Thinking. The definitions that I gave for the focus of each was: Design Thinking focuses on value discovery. That is, deciphering what people actually want. Lean focuses on value validation. That is, determining if there is a…

On the surface, it would seem like a detail, but many people are passionate about whether code should be commented on or not — Do you like writing comments in code? Or are you against them? There is no definitive, easy answer to this question. Along with the equally perplexing question of where is the best location for braces in code, we will probably never find a permanent and definitive answer. But my experience…

Even as a skeptic, I have to admit that Scrum does contain some very good elements. Let’s see what those are… — In “Javascript: The Good Parts” (2008), Douglas Crockford writes: JavaScript is a language with more than its share of bad parts… Fortunately, JavaScript has some extraordinarily good parts. In JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders.

The term is used everywhere, but what does it actually mean? — “Agile Framework” must be one the most overused but poorly understood terms in the Agile universe. Most of the time, it’s just dropped into a conversation or training course with an assumption that everyone will already know what it means. …

Do you ever feel like it takes an eternity for your code to be reviewed, and by the time it does get reviewed the code base has already moved on? Let’s explore how we might narrow that gap. — One of my frustrations as a developer is waiting for what can seem like forever to get my code reviewed and integrated into the build. I’ve heard many of my colleagues complain about the same issue too. Sometimes we have to chase people to review our code in order to…