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

Irrespective of how a project is managed, when an application is released and rolled-out, there can be a nagging question as to whether the application is performing efficiently. In any project, time pressures can force corners to be cut and short-cuts to be taken. At the end of day, if the features are operational and available, things must be ok – mustn’t they ?

In projects based on agile principles, code refactoring can be included, whereby the underlying code of an application’s functionality is reviewed and updated where necessary to make improvements to how an application operates. A proper and regular code review process helps to ensure that technical debt doesn’t build up in an application.

In my own experience and from reading various blogs, questions on the compatibility and possible conflicts between user centred design and agile principles get raised. As an advocate of both sets of principles, I think they are compatible and can influence the likely success of a project. In this blog I set my responses to some of the questions raised.

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 browsing some scrum related topics recently, I came across an interesting document by Michael James in which he lists characteristics and tasks that scrummasters can leave out in the day to day workings of a sprint. What I like about this checklist is it’s format, where the tasks and characteristics are grouped by interactions between the scrummaster and the product owner, the delivery team and the wider organisation. I have listed some of what I think are the more interesting points in the checklist.

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 [...]