May 24, 2012
GeeCon - managing remote projects # In his talk on visibility in distributed teams Pawel Wrzeszcz motivated why working remotely might be benefitial for both, employees (less commute time, more family time) as well as employers (hiring world wide instead of local, getting more talent in). He then went into more detail on some best practices that worked for his company as well as for himself.
When it comes to managing your energy the trick mainly is to find the right balance between isolating work from private live (by having a separate area in your home, having a daily routine with fixed start and end times) and integrating work into your daily live and loving what you do: The more boring your job is, the less likely you are going to succeed when working remotely.
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May 23, 2012
GeeCon - failing software projects fast and rapidly # My second day started with a talk on how to fail projects fast and rapidly. There are a few tricks to do that that relate to different aspects of your project. Lets take a look at each of them in turn.
The first measures to take to fail a project are organisational really: Refer to developers as resources – that will demotivate them and express that they are replaceable instead of being valuable human beings.
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January 31, 2012
February 2012 Apache Hadoop Get Together Berlin # The upcoming Apache Hadoop Get-Together is scheduled for 22. February, 6 p.m. - taking place at Axel Springer, Axel-Springer-Str. 65, 10888 Berlin. Thanks to Springer for sponsoring the location!
Note: It is important to indicate attendance. Due to security restrictions at the venue only registered visitors will be permitted. Get your ticket here: https://www.xing.com/events/hadoop-22-02-859807
Talks scheduled thus far:
Markus Andrezak : “Queue Management in Product Development with Kanban - enabling flow and fast feedback along the value chain” - It’s a truism today that fast feedback from your market is a key advantage.
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January 26, 2012
Scrumtisch Berlin # After quite some time off I went to the Scrumtisch Berlin. The event was incredibly well visited - roughly 50 people filled the upper floor at Cafe Hundertwasser. Today’s event was organised such that participants first collected discussion topics, prioritised them together and then discussed the top three items in a timebox of 15 minutes each.
Topics collected were:
Best tricks to make teams self organised (20 votes)
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January 22, 2012
Scrum done wrong # “Agile and Lean have a single purpose: to continually challenge the status quo. If you’re not doing that, you’re probably an impediment to it.” agile42.com
Judging from the way some people become overly careful when discussing agile in general and Scrum in particular in my presence I seem to slowly have built up a reputation for being a strong proponent of these methods. Given the large number of flaky implementations as well as misunderstandings it seems to have become fashionable to blame Scrum for all badness and dismiss it altogether - up to the point where developers are proud to finally having abandoned Scrum completely - so that now they can work in iterations, accept new tasks only for upcoming but not for the current iteration, develop in a test-driven way, have daily sync meetings, mark tasks done only when they are delivered to and accepted by the customer, have regular “how to improve our work” meetings, estimate tasks in story points and only plan for as much work per iteration as was done in the past iteration
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September 26, 2011
Design Thinking @ Scrumtisch Berlin # This evening Mary Poppendieck gave a presentation on Design Thinking in Berlin. “What does the US Military have in common with Apple?” In her talk Mary went into more detail about how increasing complexity calls for a need to rethink design. Slides are available online. Thanks for sharing them.
Mary started with a question for the audience on who in your company decides what is to be developed: Is it the PO?
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February 24, 2011
Berlin Scrumtisch - February 2011 # The February Scrumtisch Berlin featured a talk by Lyssa Adkins, famously known for her publications on Coaching Agile teams. A mixture of fifty developers, scrum masters, coaches and product owner as well as one project manager followed Marion Eikmann’s invitation. Thanks for organising the event, as well as thank you to Hypoport for providing the venue.
In her one-hour presentation she mainly focussed on two core topics: On the roles agile coaches have to fullfill as well as on the skill set needed by agile coaches.
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November 29, 2010
Christmas Scrumtisch # Today the last Scrumtisch Berlin in 2010 took place in Friedrichshain. Thanks to Marion Eickmann and Andrea Tomasini for organising the Scrum user group regularly for the past years.
Though no presentation had been scheduled ahead of time the Scrumtisch was well attended by over twenty people, mostly from companies based in Berlin who are either using Scrum already or are currently in a transition phase.
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November 3, 2010
Scrumtisch November # Title: Scrumtisch November
Location: Berlin
Link out: Click here<br />Description: Next Scrum meetup - Scrumtisch - is scheduled to take place end of November in Berlin FHain. See you there (that is at La Vecchia Trattoria) if you are interested in agile development. Please make sure to register with Marion first.
Start Time: 18:30
Date: 2010-11-29
October 24, 2010
Part 4: Constant evaluation and improvement: Finding sources for feedback. # In recent years demand for shorter feedback cycles especially in software development has increased. Agile development, lean management and even Scrum are all for short feedback cycles: Coming from the dark ages when software projects would last for months or even years before any results could be delivered to customers we are transforming development into a process that integrates the customer in the design and evolution of his own product.
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