There seems to be a lot of discussion these days about whether or not Agile still works, and whether or not Scrum in particular is “dead” or at the very least dying. The common thread that I see in these discussions is usually something to the effect of “why do we need set iterations” or “user stories suck as requirements documents” or comments in a similar vein about some fundamental part of the Scrum methodology. But, what many of these people forget — on both sides of the coin — is that if we are to truly embrace Scrum as an Agile methodology, it requires us to focus on one measure of success — actual, demonstrable results.
PM 101 – Working With Designers
This is the first in what I hope to be a series of PM 101 posts, wherein I focus on some fundamentals of Product Management. For this first article, I’ve chosen a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, as well as one that’s been raised several times during my teaching sessions at General Assembly — how should Product Managers work with Designers. Now, to clarify I’m using “Designer” as a catch-all term to include everyone involved in the User Experience, User Interface, and Human Interactions side of the product equation — basically, the people who are trained to define how the user interacts with our product in order to achieve their goals. With that established, let’s explore some common issues and potential paths to success…
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Why Isn’t Agile Working For Me – Part 4 – What to Do When Agile Isn’t Working
This is the fourth (and possibly final!) installment of my series of posts discussing why Agile may not be working for you or your organization. Part One focused on the role of culture and training; Part Two focused on the importance of continual improvement and evangelism; and Part Three focused on lack of knowledge, lack of commitment, and lack of demonstrable progress as contributing factors. In this installment, we’re going to talk about what you can do when you encounter situations where Agile (or “agile”) approaches aren’t working — small things that you can do to influence and support the transition of your teams, organization, and culture.
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When “Bias Toward Action” Goes Wrong
If you’ve been on the job market in the past several years, you’ve undoubtedly come across the phrase “bias toward action” in one or more job descriptions or company overviews, or even during a call with a recruiter. It’s become something of a buzzword, and in the way that many buzzwords do, has a meaninglessness to it that often causes us to shrug it off as just another “thing that ‘they’ say”. The problem is that having an “bias toward action” can also be code for “completely unstructured” or “constant fire drills”, so rather than shrug it off we should dig deeper to uncover the real meaning behind the term for that particular organization.
Why Isn’t Agile Working for Me? – Part 3
This is the third in a series of posts discussing the various reasons why Agile transitions tend to run into roadblocks or fail completely. In the first post, we looked at some fundamental considerations that often wind up causing problems for teams wanting to make the change to Agile practices. In the second, we discussed the importance of retrospectives and evangelism in the success of such transitions. Here, in this third post, we’re going to examine some things that many teams lack which may significantly affect their ability to implement, embrace, and succeed with Agile processes: Knowledge, Commitment, and Progress.
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