I spent two days this week getting certified as a scrum product owner through Scrum Alliance (find out more about all this here if you’re interested: https://www.scrumalliance.org/). The company where I work in software development and sales has been using the Agile methodology with Scrum for almost nine years (they were just starting this at… Continue reading Notes on Scrum Alliance Product Owner Training
My company has been using an Agile approach to software development for over 8 years. We use a Scrum approach on our development teams. But here’s the thing: we don’t do everything that Agile Scrum is supposed to involve according to the experts. We’ve adapted the approach to fit our culture; specifically we have decided… Continue reading Are we missing something?
Way back in January I posted a plan to write about Agile planning (see the entry here: http://wp.me/p2BePD-3x). It was supposed to be a ten-part series that I hoped to complete in 3-4 months. The basic outline I wanted to cover in this set of posts was as follows: What’s so hard about Agile planning? The planning onion… Continue reading Regrouping on Agile planning
I started writing this blog a couple of years ago with the intention of posting once or twice a week. I wanted to share thoughts coming specifically out of my work as a product owner developing and selling software that enables users to manage their financial risks. I wanted to share things I was learning… Continue reading Update on what’s coming soon
In my last post I stated that the goal of Agile sprint planning is for the development team to know what pieces of working functionality – prioritized by the business – they can commit to delivering with relative certainty at the end of the two-week sprint. I also wrote that the keys to planning are… Continue reading Doing sprint planning well
Early on in this set of blog posts about Agile planning I talked about the common image of the planning onion, in which there are different layers of planning that start with the widest strategic view and progress all the way to daily planning. So far I have written about strategy and portfolio planning in… Continue reading The goal of sprint planning
In my previous (long) post I talked about navigating potential conflicts that can emerge in Agile planning when a company has an inter-related set of products. I suggested that product owners have a valuable role to play in navigating these collisions by facilitating communication, articulating trade-offs, recognizing leverage opportunities, and offering a wider perspective. I… Continue reading So who decides when someone has to?
Groucho Marx once famously observed that outside of a dog a book is a man’s best friend while inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. We could use a similar analogy to talk about Agile planning and say that good planning does not happen in a vacuum because either it’s too dark, cramped,… Continue reading When worlds collide
It has been a little while since I’ve been in a good rhythm with my blogging but I am trying to get to one now. I want to work through the remaining posts in the current arc about Agile planning. Believe it or not I work hard to keep my blog posts concise. I think… Continue reading Summary on my next two posts
So a couple of weeks ago I started a ten-post blog series on Agile planning with the following rough outline: What’s so hard about Agile planning? The planning onion (or is it a flame?) Listening to the market – outside in Product roadmaps When worlds collide: functionality that impacts across products Sprint planning: how much… Continue reading Listening to the market – outside in
InTruthItsNotThatSimple 