In every Scrum class I get asked how to deal with interrupt-driven work. Scrum is very effective when dealing with planned work, but what about unplanned work that appears during a sprint? Can we use Scrum to deal with both plan-driven and interrupt-driven work? Yes, if there is statistical predictability to the must-do-now interrupt-driven flow stream. Let’s dissect what that means and how to apply it. Flow Streams Imagine there are two streams of work, each with different flow characteristics. There is the plan-driven flow stream and the interrupt-driven flow stream. The plan-driven flow str ..read more

“Cash Can’t Code!”  A colleague of mine (Chris Conrad) once told me this. The context of our discussion was about leveraging more resources to complete a large book of work by the end of the year. His main point is clear, having money to throw at the problem wasn’t going to be a solution. Basically, we have the cash, but it won’t result in code in the timeframe we need it. Why? Many people believe that if we want to get more work done, we should just throw more resources at the problem. Let’s say you’re fortunate to work for a company that has additional resources. Even better, those reso ..read more

As an agile coach I work with many companies and the terms “cross-functional” and “T-Shaped” get tossed about quite a bit. Do they mean the same thing? Certainly, many people use them synonymously. To avoid confusion when organizing agile teams and larger agile ecosystems, I have found it useful to distinguish between these two terms. In this article I will share how I define these terms and illustrate when I find each to be useful. Cross-Functional Cross-functional is an adjective that describes some entity (e.g., team or larger organizational entity) that includes people who do different typ ..read more

In this article I want to focus on the distinction between structural and instantiated dependencies. Most of the dependency management recommendations that you encounter deal with instantiated dependencies. However, the larger return on investment will be achieved by addressing structural dependencies. Note: This is the third article in the Dependency Series. The previous article is on The Economic Consequences of Dependencies. Defining The Terms Let me begin by defining my terms. A structural dependency is a linkage between two distinct organizational entities (e.g., teams) whose ex ..read more

In the first article in this Dependency Series, I discussed how shared dependencies are a critical factor that impact success when attempting agile at scale. In this second article I discuss the economic consequences of dependencies. Dependencies Effect When Work Happens If our team performs all the work, then we can more easily control when the work happens. If our team is dependent on other teams to get work done, then we quite likely do not control when all the work happens. Being at the mercy of other teams to do work on our behalf has the potential to impact predictability, cycle time, a ..read more

This article is the first in a series on the topic of dependencies and how to deal with them to achieve successful outcomes when utilizing agile at scale. In this short article I will define what I mean by dependencies and emphasize that shared dependencies are the ones that cause significant problems. What are Dependencies? Dependencies make it difficult for organizations to reliably deliver value on the promised date. Organizations adopting agile at scale typically must deal with many dependencies. Although all dependencies are important, it is the coordination of shared dependencies that is ..read more

A feature team is a cross-functional and cross-component team that can pull end-customer-valuable items from the product backlog (i.e., “features”) and complete them. One approach to creating feature teams is to combine people with experience in each of the components that needs to be “touched” onto the same team. So, for example, if a team consistently needs to make modifications to five different components to produce customer features, then one approach to forming a feature team is to pull an individual from each of the five component teams onto a single feature team.  This approach ca ..read more

Have you found yourself in a situation where a decision has to be made and the people involved believe there to be only two choices? The decision could be as simple as “Do we go out to dinner or do we stay at home?” Or, “Should we build Product A or not?” Typically, these decisions take the form of “This or That.” Defining the problem so that there are only two possible options is an example of narrow framing. Let me give you a non-technical decision my wife and I were asked to opine on several years ago. We were participating in a group discussion with a new Rabbi who had recently moved into ..read more

From an agile perspective, we never let an important assumption live long in an unvalidated or low-confidence state. The risk in doing so is that we end up making decisions or creating work products on top of the yet-to-be-validated or low-confidence assumptions that might end up being waste if we learn late that an assumption is false. Since it takes time and money to better model or validate assumptions, we want to focus on the most important assumptions first. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief taxonomy of assumptions and then use that taxonomy to determine which assumptions ..read more

My wife and I are angel investors – individuals who provide capital to start-up businesses in exchange for equity ownership. We typically invest at the very early stages of a company after friends and family have invested and before venture capitalists invest. Agile startups are where we want to invest, so we examine candidate companies through an agile lens. What is an Agile Startup? If a newly formed company is using Scrum or Kanban, does that make them an agile startup? It's a good start, but it’s not sufficient. Let me illustrate with an example. Several years ago, the founder of an eSport ..read more