Hi all,
Quick announcement…
I have a few seats still available for my Certified ScrumMaster Workshop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, next Wednesday and Thursday (January 16-17, 2008).
For details on how the workshop is conducted, please read more about it here or directly from the Scrum Alliance Site.
If you’d like to enroll, you can go directly here. You will also be able to look at upcoming public courses (or workshops) that I will be conducting around the world in the near future.
If you are interested in helping me setup a public (or private) course or workshop, please contact me and we can talk more about it. I can basically go anywhere in the world except for about 12 places the current administration of the US government says I cannot go. Sometimes I guess it pays not to be an American (smile).
Thank you and now back to our regularly scheduled blog entries (whatever those are!).
Have a great day!
PS -> If you just want to hang out and meet after the workshop one day to talk shop, let me know and I will see if we can coordinate it together.
Welcome back to another week at www.implementingscrum.com.Sorry for the interruption of this series…. now back to our semi-regular programming (smile).Two weeks ago, I wrote to you about the different approaches to rolling out Scrum in your environment.I was pretty blunt about the “top down” approach taken by many organizations.
Guess what?
A purely “Bottom Up” approach will yield much the same results.
Huh?
You may be asking yourself.
Mike…. what can you mean by this statement?
Here is a typical scenario I see using the “Bottom Up” approach….
A developer (and by this I mean anyone in the role of a tester, business analyst, coder, architect, bla bla bla techno-type-person) goes to a conference and gets fired up about some new methodology or framework to use in their environment.
Or, maybe they do not have a “conference” budget and can squeak a book budget out of their current manager (or wow… even buy it themselves!). You can check out great Agile Book recommendations here.
The point is, this person gets excited.
About Scrum. Of course.
“Wow.” They think.
“We have been doing a lot of what Scrum says but not calling it Scrum.”
[RED LIGHTS AND BIG DANGER SIGNS GO OFF IN MY HEAD WHEN I HEAR THIS.....]
It usually means there is nothing in place at this time to help the organization and they are hacking their way through a problem and looking a some major death marches [THAT makes me sad].
Or.
“Wow. This Scrum stuff looks like it is a Silver Bullet and will fix all my problems.”
It does not.
In fact, Scrum starts amplifying the dysfunctional areas within your organization.
Ouch.
Really?
Yes.
See…. the “problems” that usually start surfacing “because” of Scrum have always been there. Scrum is actually just making them more visible — and sometimes painful.
So.
It is doing the job it is supposed to do.
Now.
How does an organization handle this amplification of problems and issues?
Hmmmm….
Notice I said, “Organization.”
If one team starts trying to do this on their own and “fight” the current organizational boundaries…. to quote my last statement….
[Political Correctness OFF]
You are screwed.
[Political Correctness ON]
It is unfortunate and I have seen this time and time again.
A team is successful at implementing Scrum.
And.
All of the sudden, the rest of the organization starts seeing that they are successful.
Yikes.
Sometimes too successful.
And.
They get taken out behind the shed and, how can I put this…. get shot.
The organization rejects it.
And Scrum “fails.”
Hmmm.
So what to do?
I am saying a pure “Top Down” OR “Bottom Up” approach are not usually successful.
The next comic will address how to actually use a combination of these in order to be successful at implementing Scrum within an organization.
There is hope.
It can be done.
It is done every day!
Gotta run!.Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.
You can also enter The Scrum Community to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
October 15, 2007
Hi all,
Some of you may have noticed last night there may have been a “large” file distributed to you. If that was the case, please accept my apologies.
Now for the good news — all the “original” blog entries are now located here — every entry for the past year (plus!).
I need your assistance please.
If you have a few minutes and notice the “tags” (or categories) in the right column of your screen — please make sure they make sense and/or let me know if they need to be consolidated or updated in any way.
And.
If you are paying attention and reading this (thank you by the way, AGAIN!!!!)…. we now have over 50 cartoons on the site and growing every week. For those of you that do not know, I have co-authored a book with Scott Ambler in the past, and now publishers are starting to show interest in our site to publish as a real book (wahoo!).
I have some ideas I’d love to share and bounce off some people… if you are interested (there is no pay) in becoming a sounding board for some of the ideas, please let me know and we can have some conversations via email or actually talk!
And.
One final request.
The site is growing each week — and I thank you for that! If you can, PLEASE pass this site (even “just” the homepage) to your friends and co-workers anywhere in the world. I will continue to appreciate it. We are translated in almost a dozen languages so far, with plenty more opportunities out there (any takers?).
Hope you have a great day.
- mike vizdos
I have been receiving a lot of requests from people asking if they can print tee-shirts or mugs (or whatever) for use either internally at their company or for sale. At this time, it is strictly prohibited to use the cartoons or characters for anything that is of commercial interest (read: makes you money off our brand!).
We have a LOT of comic strips (I think we are are approaching 50!) and of course our characters. At this point, all the artwork on the site is “optimized” for the web viewing (meaning if you try to print them they are not “book” quality). This will take time to do.
So.
Instead of me rushing to convert all the artwork and creating a lot of products and an online store (bla bla bla)… I figured I’d ask YOU and see if there is any interest in merchandise for you and your teams. Am thinking T-Shirts, Mugs, and whatever cool stuff you can think of doing.
That’s where YOU come in.
Please let me know if there is any interest in merchandise from the site.
It is not a commitment to order, but rather actually me talking to my customers before trying to deliver something. Wow. How Agile :).
If you can, please take a few moments and send me your thoughts.
I’d really appreciate the feedback!
And also don’t forget to tell your teams and friends about the site (thank you).
Gotta run….
Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.
You can also enter The Forum to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
August 9, 2007
Well. It seems like there are people out there trying to add new “types” of Scrum.
And it seems like this topic rears it ugly head (meaning it “shows up”) pretty regularly in different discussions and on different boards.
You will see “Scrum Type A, B, and C” as some examples of this “evolution.”
What do the different Scrum Types looks like?
Scrum Type A
This seems to be the classic, by the book way Scrum is taught. An iteration (or Sprint) starts and stops at regular intervals.
Scrum Type B
This is where Sprints start “overlapping.” Ug.
Scrum Type C
This is where there are basically continuous - and overlapping — Sprints. Jeff Sutherland (one of the creators of Scrum, not normally mentioned) - Explains “Type C” here.
Ummm.
And the scary thing is, there are probably many more “types” of Scrum out there.
At the end of the day though, really, Scrum boils back down to doing the basics.
Ken Schwaber has addressed this publicly (and privately at meetings I have attended with other Certified Scrum Trainers).
Here is one of his comments (from a yahoo group posting):
“There is only one Scrum… There are many ways to fill in its blanks to optimize productivity and ROI, but those vary with each situation. I may implement Scrum differently if there is hardware and software involved, if there are various levels of engagement throughout the enterprise, if the engineers are more or less competent � but it is all Scrum.”
So what is the big fuss?
I really do not know.
Seriously.
It is all the same stuff.
And.
I personally think the marketing around Scrum - one of the many available agile techniques for software development - is tough enough to try to explain, teach, and implement to both people inside and outside of the software development industry.
Does it really matter about the different “types?”
No.
Really.
If this religious dogma of “typing” Scrum continues (and I am urging, along with others, to stop this nonsense) I guess I should claim “Type V” now.
Scrum - Type V
(for Vizdos, pretty creative, huh?).
This would be where all teams actually use Scrum (as Scrum should be used!) and really get it. And then all the Scrum Teams out there actively print out all our cartoons from ImplementingScrum.com (all are available here!) and use them as teaching and learning aids. And each and every person implementing “Type V” Scrum would send out all their own favorite cartoons from the site to people they know (wow, you can do that from each page by using that “tell a friend” link!) and link back to them from their own sites (both internally and externally for the world to share).
But wait.
Sorry.
And (use AND not BUT).
Um.
This differs from the way you are using Scrum today in what way?
Thought so.
Scrum = Scrum at the end of the day.
Gotta run….
Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.
You can also enter The Scrum Community to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!
August 6, 2007
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