Browsing Posts tagged Management

I agree The rate that we were now building the product at had our team estimating we would have something out after the date in the contract.


I asked if people could hold off with the questions until the end of the Sprint. It had become too much of a distraction for the team.

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The last time traveling highlighted for me examples of managing by delegation. One example was with checking in, and the other was in getting another copy of my room key. In both examples I was led to believe that my requests would lead to action and instead, both examples led to disruption and stress for those involved.

Lately I’ve been reading about people lamenting unsuccessful adoptions of Scrum within organizations. Somehow, these entities survived before Scrum was introduced. They are not just going to fold because they have not done it right. They may choose to ignore some of the principles of Agile and continue to bring in revenue without coming all the way around.

So the Agile community has some advice. Make sure good technical practices are in place. Have motivated and skilled people in the trenches with the will to change. Make sure there is executive support. Use some assessment tool. There are other suggestions, these just come to mind immediately.

If the right ingredients are not present, people are encouraged to leave the organization, or the organization to get rid of the misfits. Coaches are encouraged not to engage with dysfunctional organizations, or to fire the client when they discover that the resistance is too great.

This leaves me feeling uncomfortable. What about those left behind in the wreckage of an implementation gone awry? Fear, stress and lies are still the modes of operation. There is no hiding from the authorities. The overhead of the process is overwhelming. People are worse off, thanks to the mangled introduction of Scrum. For many reasons including personal and macro-economical, people cannot just leave the situation.

What should be done to help them?

Is the Product Backlog a list of prioritized “stuff to do”? Does it include defects, tasks and feature requests? What else?

I recently received an email from a senior-level manager, who raises a valid question about all the meetings associated with Scrum.

If there are multiple teams working off of one Product Backlog, how best to reflect and close the iteration?

Attempting to increase collaboration, and reduce competition.