Agile Teams

I found this article today via the crystalclear list I follow: http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-kanban-boards

Several of the described information radiators will already be familiar if you’ve been following agile. The most novel - one I have no choice but to love - is the “Smiley Calendar” Seriously, getting feedback on team morale this way seems like a great idea; it gives team members who don’t like to complain a way to quietly raise a flag when morale starts to suffer. Have any of you used one?

Tonight I attended an excellent ARTp (Agile RTP) session featuring Andy Hunt of Pragmatic Programmers, on “refactoring your wetware” (improving your brain; topic of his upcoming book which is ‘in beta’). Well attended, and very enjoyable.

Here’s an interesting InfoQ article on Scrum in China, for my agile-minded colleagues there

Check out the new SEI-approved Virtual SPIN. There isn’t an agile CMMI group (yet), but I do see some agile-related discussions there already. I’ve joined.

I’m so pleased to be able to announce that Aldo Dagnino has been selected as the 2008 winner of the SEI Outstanding Contributor Award, which was presented to him at SEPG 2008 in Tampa, Florida last week. Aldo has consistently published and presented on business-driven process improvement and blending the CMMI with agile methods. Most recently, a paper on which he was the lead author comparing Scrum and the project management process areas of CMMI won ‘Best Paper’ in its track (for Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile) at the CMMI Users Group Conference in November 2007. Kudos to Aldo on this well-deserved recognition!

Check out Don Highsmith’s Cutter article on self-organizing, suggesting that the term has lost its value to the agile community, and Tobias Mayer’s response. I lean towards believing the phrase still carries useful meaning which is significantly different from ‘anarchy’. Continue Reading »

Excellent article from Dr. Dobbs Journal (Sept. 2007) on “Scrum Meets CMMi“, about the experiences of an SCM tool development company in Spain.

check out Mike Vizdos’ post and the chickens-and-pigs video he and his son created!

Bob Aiello of CM Crossroads is ‘predicting the death of Agility’ in item 6 of this CM Crossroads article (TB). From where I sit, I don’t see it dying at all; I view it as continuing to evolve and adapt, to knowingly apply just the right amount of the right kind of discipline for each situation - which is essentially what he describes in his detail paragraph (IMHO; read it and decide for yourself). His other insights on globalization and shifting from project management to product management are well worth reading, too.

today I ordered a copy of free book on peer code review secrets, based on a quick read of the Cisco case study writeup which is freely downloadable from the same link. I will post back here when I know what I think of the book.