The main points I took from discussions on the best practices for using kanban and lean methodologies from London lean kanban day

Within the umbrella of agile practices, people enquire about the scrum methodology and the kanban technique as regards their similarities, their differences and potential benefits using one over the other. This blog looks at the characteristics of each, potential scenarios where one or both could be used to best advantage and finishes with a video of Jean Tabaka providing her perspective on both methodologies.

One of the principles of the Scrum approach to agile development and project management is self-organisation. The benefit(s) that occur when a team self-organises include improved performance and creativity within the team. I have decided in this blog to use two video clips which discuss the principles of self-organisation, how to roll it out in an organisation and some differences with traditional project management.

Technical debt is a metaphor that refers to the consequences of allowing low quality software coding to go unchanged. Ward Cunningham, one of the pioneers of extreme programming, coined the phrase to convey the potential risks of taking short-cuts when developing and testing code for an application. Ward’s first law states that lowering code quality lengthens development time. Whatever the form, the negative impact of technical debt on your development team decreases their throughput. get out of this spiral, strong executive sponsorship is needed.

In a previous blog, I wrote about the principles and advantages of agile development and I would like to continue on that theme with a post on the role of a scrum master. A scrummaster’s responsibilities The scrum master is; First and foremost, a facilitator to the project team, to ensure that all ideas/views from [...]

When I was completing my scrum master training with Jean Tabaka, we started the course with an interesting discussion on what we thought Agile development and Scrum was and wasn’t about. This discussion illustrated some valuable points for project teams that in today’s business world, have to be more responsive, flexible and creative when delivering [...]

With some Agile methods for project management, particularly in the Scrum approach, the project manager should be more of a facilitator in working towards a series (iterations) of successful software releases. With this facilitative style in mind, I have listed, what I think, are important areas/tasks for an ‘Agile’ project manager to focus on when [...]

Agile Development assisting in the rapid delivery of high quality software I believe that the main principles of Agile Development can Help application development projects bring practical benefits on today’s challenging business environment. Fit very well with the user centered design approach. In particular I would like to focus on the principle of iterations. An [...]