Dr. Mitchell's Scrum Shack

Ian Mitchell, BSc Hons, PhD, FRGS
Agile Alliance Member
DZone Most Valuable Blogger
IBM Certified Enterprise Developer
SPS
PSM Level III
PST
Certified Scrum Master

Ian in the Dev Shed
Latest post: September 14, 2017
The three Scrum roles of Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team can certainly appear minimalistic and "lean" from the perspective of a big organization. Why is it then that a Lean-Kanban approach prescribes no particular roles at all, and what lessons might we draw about how a lean or agile enterprise ought to deliver value?

Read More..."Scrum Roles from a Lean Perspective"

Earlier posts

    1. Walking Through a Definition of Ready
    2. Three Sporting Fails for your Agile Interview
    3. Walking Through a Definition of Done
    4. Type III Scrumban: A Journey
    5. Managing Technical Debt
    6. The Empirical Product Owner: Innovation Accounting in Scrum
    7. The Product Backlog and Technical Debt
    8. Type II Scrumban: Going Straight
    9. Using a 'Technical Debt Register' in Scrum
    10. Gross Definitions: 144 Agile Terms You Simply Have To Know
    11. Why the Agile Enterprise must be an Innovation Network
    12. The Agile PMO
    13. Type I Scrumban: A Forensic Approach
    14. A Typical Sprint, Play-By-Play
    15. The Agile Crime Scene
    16. Risk Burn-up: Daring Deeds in DevOps
    17. Running Scrum Sprints in DevOps
    18. The DevOps Studio (PDF)
    19. Technical Spikes in DevOps
    20. Innovation Wars: Trump, Lean Startup, and Zero to One (PDF)
    21. By Bell, Book, and Candle
    22. Agile Scaling Frameworks: An Executive Summary
    23. DZone Scrum Refcard Update
    24. Sprint Goals in Practice
    25. Ordering a Product Backlog to Minimize Development Team Dependencies
    26. Counting Chickens: Undone Work in Scrum
    27. Is agile transformation at risk?
    28. Pull in Practice
    29. Choosing Metrics for Agile Practice
    30. Choosing Columns for Agile Team Boards
    31. Stabilizing Teams for Agile Practice
    32. Agile Transformation in Organizations that Suck
    33. Method Wars: On the Commoditization of Estimates
    34. Method Wars: Scrum vs SAFe
    35. Limiting WIP: Stories vs Tasks
    36. Sprint Retrospectives in Practice
    37. Your boss, the Invader from Mars
    38. Sprint Backlogs in Practice
    39. The Agile Response to a P1 Incident
    40. The Kanban Sandwich: A Bite-Size Recipe for Agile Work Flows at Scale
    41. Agile Teamwork in Practice
    42. Sprint Reviews in Practice
    43. Taking One for the Team: the Refactoring of Failure
    44. Definitions of Done in Practice
    45. Product Backlogs in Practice
    46. Confirmed or Busted: Are the Mythbusters Agile?
    47. Agile Estimation in Practice
    48. Sprint Planning in Practice
    49. Winging It: Going Live with Technical Debt
    50. Scrum Master: Servant Leadership in Practice
    51. An Agile Health Check: The Daily Standup in Practice
    52. Suiting Up for Agile Practice
    53. User Stories in Practice
    54. Product Ownership in Practice
    55. Why Stretched Teams do Scrumban
    56. Getting Real with Scrumban

    An archive of posts before 2013 is available here.

    Agile Development in Practice
    "Agile Development in Practice"


    I was asked to pull the In Practice series together into a book, so I have. Here's the blurb:

    The development of complex systems is fraught with difficulty. Many organizations have taken the vocabulary and outward form of agile practice, but without sponsoring the deep change that agile adoption genuinely requires. The benefits they hope for escape them...and their projects continue to fail. All too often, nothing really changes at all.

    This book tells you what agile practice is really about, and how to achieve it. The essential components of an agile way of working are laid out chapter by chapter. The book concludes with a concise treatment of the agile transformation problem, and shows how to leverage agile patterns and practices in order to resolve it.

    You can buy it at amazon.com. ISBN 978-1-908552-49-5, 260 pages.

    This month’s gargoyle is on Ripon Cathedral in North Yorkshire. The “Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Wilfrid”, as it is formally known, was founded as a monastery by Scottish monks in the 660s before being refounded as a Benedictine monastery by St Wilfrid in 672. The cathedral is notable architecturally for its gothic west front in the Early English style, considered one of the best of its type, as well as the Geometric east window. The seventh-century crypt of Wilfrid's church is a significant example of early Christian architecture in England.

    Today's church is the fourth to have stood on this site. Saint Wilfrid brought stonemasons, plasterers and glaziers from France and Italy to build his great basilica in 672. The Early English west front was added in 1220, its twin towers originally crowned with wooden spires and lead. The east window was built as part of a reconstruction of the choir between 1286-8 and 1330.

    For previously featured gargoyles, go down to The Vault.

    The Doctor Is In...


    Have a question about Scrum or agile practice in general? I hang out in the Scrum Forum and I'm a certified trainer. Post a query there and I'll help if I can:
    scrum.org/Community/Forums

    If you're after an overview of Scrum and what it's about, you can have a look at my presentation Scrum in an Hour. There is also a companion text, The Agile Buddy Guide.

    For the low-down on many topical issues, you can see Agile Tom, the Scrum Shack's resident cat.

    I teach the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master course fairly regularly. Classes are usually held in Aske Hall in North Yorkshire:
    Upcoming classes

    A little information about me


    I'm Chief Scientist at proAgile Ltd. Agile transformation is my bag. I tweet and blog quite actively about this.     I'm also the curator at agilepatterns.org.

    Too much information about me


    Hobbywise, I'm into Extreme Ironing. I've ironed underneath the ice-sheet of a frozen lake, and I've also gifted the world with the "fusion" sport of bog snorkelling + extreme ironing.

    I do quite a bit of scuba diving in lakes and rivers, mainly in pursuit of antique bottles.

    Cave diving is another interest, and I have traversed White Lady sump in the Dan-yr-Ogof system while training under the redoubtable Martyn Farr.

    Of course, I have plumbed even murkier depths on public sector IT projects. This latter experience once lead to an outburst of Vogon Poetry; you can commiserate by reading it here.