Category: Agility

In the traditional approach (called Waterfall) most developers never feel the owner of the code. Why did this situation happen? Because they haven’t any opinion about the technical issues related with the requirements. Business Analysts think and write uses cases (or other form to specify the requirements) to document each requirement. Then architects move all this information to technical level such as model of database and so on. Even more, there were some company (or maybe there are still companies working in this old way) that provide a framework to developers in order to standardized the development.

Scrum is a simple and flexible software development methodology or framework. Scrum framework introduces alternatives to traditional project management systems such as Waterfall or Sequential development. In scrum we only have three roles; product owner who represents the clients or users, the scrum master who is the silent leader and the team. From my experience, additional roles are not needed since they don’t usually bring extra benefits. The Scrum framework covers all the necessary aspects for successful software and product development. Instead of additional roles it is possible to have a product owner team, where the different product owners cover different areas of the product. Depending on the degree of innovation and uncertainty in your project, this might be even …

Benefits of Adopting Scrum for Software Development Read more »

In IT as well as other areas communication or the conveyance of information is an important factor. As you might have experienced yourself, communication in general is an error-prone thing. Misunderstandings and perceptions occur regularly and have an impact. Wrongly understood information could lead to unnecessary costs for your organization and frustration amongst staff.

Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is a method that helps to reduce meeting times and make meetings more effective. The method is nowadays widely spread since it is simple, robust and effective. With this post I want to introduce the method briefly and also tell you about some experiences I’ve made using it.

Daily stand up meetings were introduced to me together with Scrum. From my point of view having a daily stand up meeting is a very good idea for coordinating and planning the day. Since it makes a difference whether your daily stand up meeting is effective or not, I want to share some thoughts on that subject.