Project Methodologies

An introduction to the basics of the Kanban System.

Kanban is a visual system for managing work as it moves through a process. It enables a shared understanding of the issues and progress of current work and the next immediate task priorities. In this resource the authors explore all the basics of Kanban, including its principles, practices, background and usage in lean-agile environments. Complete with videos and clear images, it is highly recommended for novices and experts alike.

Describing various Agile design principles and practices in-depth.

Describes Agile Design principles and practices in-depth, including refactoring, restructuring, clean-code, simple code, technical debt, incremental design, design principles, design patterns, emrgenet design, domain-driven design, evolutionary architecture.

An update to the rules of the game in it's 20th year anniversary.

Ever since the first version of the Scrum Guide was released in 2010 with the goal to help people understand Scrum globally, it has been continually updated with new rules and uses to coincide with the ever-evolving complex world. Check the newly updated 2020 version of the Scrum Guide with more details and definitions of the rules of the game.

Explaining what Agile really means in daily practice.

The definitions of Agile in the context of software development vary, but few focus on what it means in daily practice. In this to-the-point article, Barry Overeem shares his favorite definitions of Agile, the 7 principles of Continuous Innovation and an example video from the video by the Nordstrom Innovation Lab that put's it all into practice. It will help you grasp the concept of Agile Software Development better.

Transforming the part of the value stream that corresponds to the development of options, order management or product discovery into elements ready for delivery.

Upstream Kanban helps companies model the process of transforming options into elements ready for delivery. Basically, it is all the activities done to fix inconsistencies in the Upstream and enhance business agility to deliver the expected product or service quickly to the customers. However, most companies find it difficult to implement it fully because they lack basic information and decision frameworks to be able to do that quickly and effectively. This article details information about what is an Upstream Kanban, how it can help companies, and how to implement it.

How Kanban can help you get a handle on your volume of work by unhiding it and improving your flow.

Is your team under constant pressure to meet delivery dates and increase efficiency? Brendan Wovchko explains how using Kanban gives you the visibility you need to streamline your IT operations. You'll learn how to: 1) Prioritize work more effectively; 2) Manage stakeholder expectations; 3) Use Lean metrics to remove waste. Only when you’re dealing with the true state of your work can you identify ways to accelerate your delivery.

Exposing the reality of work at Spotify, as a failure/learning report intended for change agents to see the challenges and the opportunities for growth.

Let's put aside the 'bubblegum and unicorns' of the Spotify Engineering Culture videos and talk about what doesn't quite work at Spotify, and how we're trying to solve it. Joakim Sundén (who was an agile coach at Spotify headquarters from 2011 to 2017) presents a failure/learning report intended for coaches and other change agents who need encouragement that it's always hard AND it's always possible to improve.

The principles of Agile 2 - the self-proclaimed "Next Generation of Agile".

The article describes the proclaimed next-generation of Agile principles. The authors further list the problems and insights discovered during their retrospective on the state of Agile and the ensuing discussions when coming to a consensus on these principles. As we have highlighted some of them in the takeaways, the principles teach us about what to expect in Agile 2.0. Check the article for more insights about each principle, the corresponding problem, and the key roles that Agile will be playing to solve them.

A very short and simple kanban intro, showing the changes of state as time progresses.

Is your company still trying to understand and implement Kanban? check this short, simple, and clear Kanban introduction by Henrik Kniberg. In a comic style, the designer displays briefly the events that take place in a Kanban environment. From selecting the two most important things in the backlog list to the development team, to releasing the features by the deployment team.

How to identify when agile tools and practices are being adopted without deploying them with the accompanying mindset.

Agile senior contributor Steve Denning explains Fake Agile. It follows a request by a major corporation to give a talk on the topic describing what it is, how to identify it, and how to deal with it. He argues that the term “agile” is often thrown around without any agreement on its meaning and being applied to firms, or parts of firms, that have no substantive claim to any agility. Surveys by Deloitte and McKinsey show that more than 90% of senior executives give high priority to becoming agile, while less than 10% see their firm as currently highly agile. Based on his past research, Steve suggests that Real Agile is achieved by organizations embodying a mindset with three main laws: the "Law of the Customer", the "Law of the Small Team", and the "Law of the Network".

Find out why attempting to standardize a single method of Agile practice across your organization could be slowing everyone down.

Knowing the power of self-organization, frameworks, and best practices can be very useful. But staying open to solutions that are different is more important than standardizing one framework in the organization. An Agile framework that works for one department may not automatically work for all other departments. As such, rather than having a universal process for all departments within the organization, allow tailored processes for each department(s) as required. Check the article to find out more about the risk of adopting a one-size-fits-all approach and the role of leadership when implementing Agile frameworks.

The steady routine of actions - centred around continuous improvement - that reduce complexity, promotes predictability and controls risk.

Sjoerd Nijland explores the four formal Scrum events listed in the Scrum guide that evolve around inspection and adaptation. They include Sprint planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. He explains that Scrum events are collaborative sessions that create regularity, and are time-boxed with a maximum duration, among other characteristics. We can learn more from the article about these events, like the core values they bring to a scrum team.

Learn about Kanban, a visual method for managing workflow. If your work follows the pattern of “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done,” it can be managed with Kanban.

An in-depth analysis of the Kanban methodology explaining what it is, how its key features such as a Kanban board and card work, its role in Agile, where the method originated, and more. We learn that, unlike other workflow management methods that force change from the outset, Kanban is about evolution, not revolution. It hinges on the fundamental truth that you must know where you are before you can get to your desired destination. If your work follows the pattern of “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done,” it can be managed on a Kanban board.

Often misunderstood, having a “done” increment of product at the end of every sprint drives continuous improvement.

Tristan Libersat delves into Scrum to explain the most important element of the Agile framework that most people often contradict with its principles. He notes that many people don’t understand Scrum, they see 3 roles, 5 events, and 3 artifacts, but they fail to get the real purpose of the framework. He adds that every agile framework and practice has an intended purpose that can be different from others, but that always relates to at least one value or principle described in the Agile Manifesto. Thus Libersat concludes that the Sprint is the cornerstone of Scrum. Let's find out more about the purpose of Scrum and its essence in the article.

Differentiating between continuous (kaizen) and radical (kaikaku) improvement.

The Kanban Method helps teams maximize productivity by creating a flow from request to delivery of value. Jurgen Appelo argues that Kanban's ability to handle continuous, evolutionary, and incremental improvement (kaizen) may prevent from being a great choice for discontinuous, revolutionary, and radical improvement (kaikaku). The best tools are always great in context, and he shares his reasoning and alternative solutions.

Introducing an iterative innovation process focused on the creation of value and the priorities of the organization.

Jose Cabrera introduces an iterative innovation process that is being adopted by new generation companies within the current age of technology to survive the uncertainties it poses and accelerate their growth. He alleges that the world is moving exponentially while company structures remain very linear thus creating a dynamic environment for organizations. As a result, he suggests that stakeholders need new mental models to build and lead organizations in this world of accelerated changes, new organizational structures capable of interacting with the new reality, and new systemic models for change, in order to allow the transformation of the entire organization.

A catchup with Kent Beck, the creator of Extreme Programming, the pioneer of xUnit and author of numerous books including "Extreme Programming Explained" and "Test Driven Development".

Kent Beck, the creator of extreme programming and the pioneer of xUnit and other multiple books, shares his knowledge of programming in this episode covering fundamental coding lessons that developers should pay attention to. For starters, he states that programmers are responsible for their codes to run and once they have accepted that responsibility, unit testing falls directly out of it. The programming ace also points out that extreme software programming is a social process and not an individual activity and in the coding world, nobody cares about certificates - they care about competence.

Outlining a framework to handle the rapid pace of change by managing the Survive Channel and the Thrive Channel.

In the post-pandemic period, organizations are adapting to the new changes made during the pandemic. Such as leveraging social tools like zoom to interact with their teams and clients. However, how are the companies dealing with this major transition? Here, we learn the two-channel systems coded into humans that are usually in response during times of rapid change and uncertainty. The Survive Channel, which is activated by threats and leads to feelings of fear, anxiety, and stress; and the Thrive Channel, which is activated by opportunities and is associated with feelings of excitement, passion, and joy.

As delicate a balance in Scrum as it is in our democratic institutions.

Talking about the balance of the accountabilities, did you know the success of every Scrum Team is geared by the mutual balance that exists between the three separate roles of the Scrum Framework? In a Scrum Team, the Product Owner decides what needs to be done, the Developers decide how to develop it, and the Scrum Master helps everyone to continuously improve the way they use the Scrum Framework to carry out their responsibilities. The balance between these three people makes a Scrum Team effective. This also reflects in the democratic government world as discussed in the article.

Dr. Mik Kersten reviews Gene Kim's latest book The Unicorn Project, drawing parrallels between The Five Ideals & The Flow Framework™.

The article explains the birth of the Five Ideals that underpin the Unicorn Project and lay the foundation for the flow metrics. Dr. Mik Kersten together with Gene the author of the Unicorn Project book review and scribble down ideas for the ideals that the main character (Chris) was seeking on her leadership and transformation journey. Get more insights through this review about the Unicorn Project and the empirical significance of the five ideals.

The books cover all eight areas of the Scrum Master competency model.

This handy list of books is categorized by each of the eight areas of the Scrum Master competency model developed by the Agile Coaching Institute. Whether you have questions regarding the practice, coaching, facilitating, teaching, mentoring, or mastering either technical, transformation or business settings - this list from Illia Pavlichenko will provide you with key resources to get started with.

Understanding how cultural management impacts agile approaches in an organization.

Does managerial culture influence agile approaches? Johanna Rothman, a managerial consultant, summarizes a Twitter thread about perspective and non-perspective agile approaches in this article to explain how managers (and the culture they uphold) impact agile transformations in an organization. Organizations live by either Theory X or the Theory Y of management, however, irrespective of the method used, most agile transformations fail! WHY? Johanna adds that for any agile approach to work, managerial culture has to change first.

Explaining the very first instance of SCRUM, and its mission to deliver as much quality software as possible within a series of short time boxes called Sprints.

A cunning critique of the Scrum Guide and why you shouldn’t care about the immutability rule present in the Scrum Guide.

The messy reality of what it’s like to be a Scrum Master, from an author with the guts to share failures where most people only share their pretty successes.

A simple model to explain Agile in a nutshell with an anchored visualization, with visible items and some below the surface.