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I have been asked at least once whether I would describe Scrum as a process. My answer was something like “it’s a framework” a “very high-level process” but I don’t think that was helpful. It occurred to me recently that a more helpful explanation of the distinction between Agile processes and some other development processes would be to use ...

Let's be clear on one point. You can't do Agile. You can only be Agile. What causes some confusion I think is that in order to be Agile, you often need to do some of the things you're currently doing now differently. But if you really want to succeed at being or becoming Agile, you really need to first conquer how you're thinking. Agile ...

I often talk with teams about why software projects fail, yet we have answers. We have modern engineering practices that give us faster technical feedback, reducing technical and integration issues and resulting in higher quality products.  We have ways to work more effectively with our customers, reducing the risk that we deliver the wrong ...

Say what you like about the iPad, but it’s got people talking, and thinking. The effect on the world, to me, is almost more interesting than the device itself. Whilst reading this well considered piece, I was immediately struck by the following statement (emphasis mine) The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer ...

It’s always been possible to descope work in the Scrum for Team System template. But the method employed in Version 2.2 whilst functional, was quite fiddly, overly manual and not very “Scrummy”. When building 3.0 we took the opportunity to revamp the way in which it worked and better utilise the power of the Event Service (something you can see ...

In October 2009 I created 2 codeplex projects which I would to tell you about: SQL Server Reporting Services MSBuild Tasks (ssrsmsbuildtasks) A few years ago I created some tasks for MSBuild to help deploy reports for my project, details can be found here,  since then my tasks have been re-used in a few other projects within my ...

Within any application lifetime management methodology, the reports are a useful tool to help see how well , or not , the project is progressing.  Within the Scrum methodology the reports which are used for tracking progress are the burndown reports.  In the Scrum for Team Systems process templates for Team Foundation Server these ...

In Scrum for Team System 2.x Product Backlog Items (PBI’s) lived a simple life. They had an iteration path, an area path and were linked to Sprint Backlog Items (SBI’s). Confusingly, the more common terminology for SBI’s amongst non TFS users is Sprint Backlog Tasks – or SBT’s – which is why we’ve adopted this terminology for our Version 3.0 ...

Next week I’m speaking on Scrum in the Enterprise and Process Customisation with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 at PDC 2009 in Los Angeles. There is far more to Scrum for Team System Version 3.0 than I can possibly cover in the allotted time so I’m supporting both the presentation as well as our Beta 2 launch with a series of blog posts. To make ...

As awareness of Kanban grows, people are naturally wanting to learn more about it; especially if they’ve tried Scrum and found it challenging or failed to reap any perceivable benefits from it. At first glance, many people see the basic difference between Scrum & Kanban being that one system has time boxes, and the other does not. Another ...