Scaling the PO team

Second session was planned to be another session with Alistair Cockburn however, he choose to ignore the official session title and instead he conducted an interactive activity demonstrating the power of iterative development and effectiveness of an adaptive process. after that Ive joined a session focusing on the role of the PO in a scrum process and how to scale this position without damaging the entire process. The role of the PO in a scrum team is to represent the client. the PO is responsible of maximizing the ROI, i.e. he’s the one responsible for generating $$$. Specifically the PO is in charge of grooming the product backlog, which includes among other, writing user stories, prioritizing them and keeping track on what is getting build. The important thing to remember is that this...

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Posted in: Events,Scrum,Team System

ScrumBan

After Alistair lecture the convention divided into 4 different tracks, I chose to attend the session titled as ScrumBan given By Yuval Yeret (a Coach in Agile sparks). In this talk Yuval introduced some of the ideas behind Kanban and how they fit inside a Scrum Process. So what is Kanban I not going to explain too much here info on that can be found here and here. I would just say that Kanban is what guided toyota when designing its lean manufacturing line and it very much resemble a Scrum process with two major differences: its more flow based and less iteratice kind of process. being a flow based process the amount of work In Progress allowed (WIP)is limited. When to use Kanban Kanban should be used in situations when one...

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Posted in: Events,Random Thoughts,Scrum

Opening talk – Alistair Cockburn

The opening talk title was “Effective software development in the 21st century”. As promised by the title this session was packed with so many great insights, advices and ideas for me to be able to repeat them all. But some stuff did stick and I thought i should share. Agile has grown beyond small organizations Yes, this simple fact still comes as a surprise for people outside agile circles. However one must remember that originally Agile methodologies (mainly XP and Scrum) were created for such teams. A fact that some Agilists tend to forget. What is important that current methodologies, as used today, have grown, changed and adopted to all kind of projects and they are still growing. For example the trend in which more engineering practices are picked by organization doing Scrum might...

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Posted in: Events,Scrum. Random Thoughts

Second Israeli Scrum Gathering

Well the second gathering has ended and it was great. while the amount of people coming this time seemed to be a little less than the first time (I estimate there were about 150-200). Content wise this day was way better. I think that this time most of the sessions were aimed for a more advanced audience, assuming at least basic knowledge of what is scrum and Agile. Another improvement was that this time the keynote speaker was physically present. While it was nice hearing Ken Schwaber through a live feed, it didn’t have the same effect as having Alistair Cockburn in the same room. And hearing what Alistair has to say is fascinating (more on that will follow). Like last time, the day was opened by a lecture given by the key note speaker followed by breaking up into 3 tracks lasting until...

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Posted in: Events,Scrum,XP

Off to Second Israel Scrum Gathering

The second Israeli Scrum User Group gathering is happening today. Last time was really good and I expect this time to be even better. the Key Note speaker of the Day is Dr. Alistair Cockburn and the rest of agenda also looks promising even more. so if don't have any special plan I'm sure its not too late to co...

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Posted in: Events,Scrum