Repairman Jack in Agile

Okay, so I have been an avid reader of F. Paul Wilson’s “Repairman Jack” series (http://repairmanjack.com/) finding out about it through a book club my sales executive friend, Greg Kaufman, introduced to me back in 2002.  Aside from the fact that I’ve befriended a sales person is like cats living with dogs, the book really

The PMO phoenix is reborn

In my last article, I stated that the Project Management Office (PMO) is dead.  However, I also stated long live the PMO! In Greek mythology, the phoenix is a fiery bird that would be cyclically be reborn from its own ashes.  I believe the concepts and the principles of a Project Management Office will be

The PMO is dead; long live the PMO!

Today, the traditional Project Management Office (PMO) is being challenged as a viable model for project governance.  Back in the day when traditional waterfall process dominated IT project delivery, the PMO was king for larger organizations.  However, even when “PMO was king”, many people within an organization would consider the PMO unnecessary overhead, calling it,

Food, Attention Deficit and Context Switching

“The art of eating your work.” Okay, had a stray thought while eating breakfast one fine Saturday morning.  It dawn on me that in today’s twitch generation, many people have fallen victim to the dangers of attention deficit and context switching. Attention deficit (AD) is chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.  It’s where

Root Cause Analysis – Core Competency

Related to removing impediments is the skill of identifying root causes, typically called Root Cause Analysis (RCA) within the technical world.  Some Project Leaders (be it a traditional Project Manager, Scrum Master or something in between) may believe that RCA is really a skill that the team has full ownership and that the Scrum Master

The Art of Removing Impediments

Been noticing in my career that one skill set Project Managers / Scrum Masters should master, but often don’t is the art of removing impediments.  This is not an easy skill to master and requires curiosity, courage, diplomacy, tenacity and a little bit of creativity and communication. Often removing impediments involves connecting the right people

Dual Track Scrum Summary

In my previous blogs of Dual Track Scrum (DTS), I cover the current expansion of Scrum to place more attention on building the right product through the means of a detailed, continuous discovery process tailored for developing better backlogs through multiple tools and techniques, such as story boards, feedback groups and surveys.  This is tracked

Dual Track Scrum Tools and Techniques, Part 2

Within Scrum, a product backlog is used for tracking prioritized development requirements as normally determined by the product owner.  In Dual Track Scrum, it is recommend to use a separate backlog for the Discovery track.  Essentially, the discovery track backlog will “feed” into the product delivery backlog.  Discovery tracks would include techniques such as User

Dual Track Scrum Tools and Techniques

To continue on Dual Track Scrum (DTS), please note at this juncture, I have not put any of these steps fully in practice and so they are purely from a theoretical perspective, although I am aware that DTS pundits such as Aaron Sanders has implemented these tools and techniques within multiple organizations. To recap, Dual

Dual Track Scrum continued

In my last blog, the topic of Dual-Track Scrum (DTS) was brought up.  That was for my initial impressions.  Now this blog covers a deeper dive.  The ideas behind DTS started with Marty Cagan in 2009 and expanded to being supported by Jeff Patton and Aaron Sanders, among others. Essentially, Dual-Track Scrum follows core Scrum