Category Archives: Lean/Kanban

Scrumban = Scrum + Kanban

I’ve been a follower of Scrum ever since I first heard Ken Schwaber present the subject at an XP user group meeting in Pasadena in ’04. Scrum has come a long way since then, boasting over 50,000 Certified ScrumMasters worldwide. Scrum is well beyond the innovator and early-adopter stages and firmly entrenched in the early-majority stage. People are no longer asking, “Will Scrum work?” but rather “How will Scrum work for me?”

Unfortunately, along with popularity comes dilution and permutation. Surrounding a core of solid, serious adopters lies a realm of half-serious adopters sometimes jokingly, but affectionately, referred to as “Scrum-buts.” You hear them say things like “We’re doing Scrum, but we’re not doing daily standup meetings,” or “We’re doing Scrum, but we can’t track velocity because the iteration work keeps getting interrupted with support calls.” Scrum purists would say that these people are missing the point of Scrum. That the full measure of benefit from Scrum cannot be realized by adopting it piecemeal.

I used to be that kind of a purist, but I’ve changed. Continue reading Scrumban = Scrum + Kanban

Kanban Slides Posted

Here (finally) are the slides (as a PDF file) for the Intro to (Personal) Kanban speech that I gave at the OCDUG meeting on July 26th. Actually, the set of slides I posted just now has been embellished quite a bit from what I actually used during the presentation (which is why it took me a while to post them). If those embellishments spark any questions, feel free to post a comment here, or contact me directly.

If you enjoyed this speech, then you might also be interested in materials from other speeches that I’ve given in the past.  You can find them on the Downloads page.

User-Story Sizing: How Small is Small Enough?

The S in the INVEST mnemonic is a reminder to make your user-stories small. The trick is in knowing how small is small enough. The rule here is to make the story as small as possible, yet that it retains some measurable amount of intrinsic value — something that, when demonstrated to the end users, they’ll agree is an improvement to the system. Conversely, Continue reading User-Story Sizing: How Small is Small Enough?

Some User-Story Examples

Kindle screensaver asking for feedbackI’m often asked if I have any good user-story examples to share. Until recently, I always had to answer, “No,” because I didn’t have permission from my clients to share their work product. Then, the other day, it occurred to me that I could kill two birds with one stone. As an avid user of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, I had some feedback to share with Amazon — feedback that I hope might improve the already excellent product. I decided to write up my feedback in the form of user-stories, complete with acceptance criteria. Below, therefore, you will find four new-feature stories and one bug-report story, each with three or four acceptance-test scenarios.

I did this partially just as a mental exercise, but I also reasoned that Continue reading Some User-Story Examples

Now Reading: “Personal Kanban” by Benson and Barry

Last night, I obtained an autographed copy of Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry. Jim gave an engaging speech in which he described some awesome success stories. The speech was about Kanban, in general, as applied in business settings.  So, now, I’m anxious to read the book to get Jim and Tonianne’s take on how to apply it individually.

When I spoke to Tonianne privately after the event, I told her that I’m a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (“GTD”), and I asked her how their Personal Kanban compares to GTD. She said that PK actually plays nice with, and builds upon, GTD and that GTD is mentioned prominently in the book.  Now, I just need to see if I can remember how to read a book that’s printed on physical paper.