In the Pig and Chicken analogy for Scrum participants (Jeff Sutherland explains Pigs & Chickens), the Pig is the one who is required to make the biggest commitment and put his proverbial skin in the game. For the Pig, it is an all or nothing proposition. They either meet their commitment or they do not, there is no gray area. However, many teams fail to get this level of commitment from their Pigs, or don’t even ask for it in the first place. This is the genesis of the Outlier Pig.
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The prioritization of Stories is a core practice in the Scrum agile development process. In fact it is probably the single most important responsibility of the Product Owner – making sure the Product Backlog is prioritized properly to maximize business value (a.k.a ROI). However, there is a common anti-pattern that I see regularly in which the Product Owner and the Delivery Team act complicitly to establish a priority order for Stories that are being committed too within a single Sprint. The need to do this comes from a negative place and it has dramatic consequences for the Delivery Team.
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A colleague of mine forwarded an article to me during this last week, which he prefaced with the following statement …
guys, I’ll write it in all caps and bold:
I AM NOT PROMOTING OR IN AGREEMENT OF ANY OF THE POINTS THE ARTICLE MAKES.
… which begs the question, why did he send it not only to me, but an entire team of people? I choose to believe it was because he is an enlightened soul that understands that the best way to reinforce your own beliefs is to read more of the opposing point of view, not more of the view you already have. I am lucky to have a few of these souls working for me right now.
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SoCal Code Camp is back, November 21st & 22nd
Code Camp is a place for developers to come and learn from their peers. This community driven event has become an international trend where peer groups of all platforms, programming languages and disciplines band together to bring content to the community.
Who is speaking at Code Camp? YOU are, YOUR PEERS are, and YOUR LOCAL EXPERTS are…all are welcome! This is a community event and one of the main purposes of the event is to have local community members step up and offer some cool presentations!
Bill Crane, the vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, says local members of the social networking site may haveorange-prize Orange County as a geographic designation for members’ profiles within two weeks.
http://jan.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/16/linkedin-working-on-oc-geographic-designation/22015/
Another purpose of measuring capacity is to improve throughput. If you plan for less than your capacity, you get less done than you could have. If you plan for more than your capacity, you get less done than you could have.
- Kent Beck
(original signatory of the Agile Manifesto)
Agile Open California is a coalition of agile practitioners and advocates with an intention to provide an opportunity for learning, networking and growth to the Agile community in California and others who are interested.
Using the Open Space Technology framework, we hold Gatherings where sessions are self-organized around topics important to the participants. We invite you to take this opportunity to share your experiences, test new ideas and learn what other practitioners are thinking and doing!
http://agileopencalifornia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=46
