Thursday, December 29, 2005
Being empowered means being prepared to take a chance
Posted by Simon Baker
In an empowered environment, any action means taking some risk because there is the chance of making mistakes. When a team is empowered it has authority to decide how best to achieve a goal and it's acceptable to fail when learning is happening.
Leading the way
Posted by Simon Baker
It doesn't take power or authority to demonstrate leadership. The most effective leadership depends on the ability of an individual to recruit others to a particular course of action through persuasion and negotiation, and not by enforcing compliance because of some authority.
Read more...
Monday, December 19, 2005
Getting to know people
Posted by Simon Baker
When I start on a project as a Scrum Master, I want to get to know the people I'll be working with as quickly as possible. Beyond the basic introductions, I perform the following activities with the team and Product Owner:
Read more...
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Slop and slack
Posted by Simon Baker
Michael Feathers identified iteration slop as the time spent before an iteration, preparing for it, and the time spent after an iteration, finalizing the work.
Read more...
Friday, December 16, 2005
What does it mean to be empowered?
Posted by Simon Baker
Understandably, some developers who come from a command and control environment are uncomfortable in a self-organizing team that empowers developers. In a recent post to the Scrum development newsgroup about coaching a developer away from being spoon-fed, an interesting discussion ensued about what it meant to be an empowered developer on a team.
Read more...
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Martin Fowler has updated The New Methodology
Posted by Simon Baker
Read The New Methodology.
Read more...
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Seeking improvement and receiving feedback
Posted by Simon Baker
Kent Beck identifies improvement as a principle. He says "there is no perfect process, there is no perfect design, there are no perfect stories. You can, however, perfect your process, your design, and your stories". You can also perfect yourself.
Read more...
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Serenity isn't freedom from the storm, but peace within the storm
Posted by Simon Baker
Amidst the storm of unpredictability that is software development, you can find calm and control by using Scrum. An empirical process such as Scrum uses honest feedback, and frequent inspection and adaptation to control progress in an unpredictable environment.
Read more...
