by Michael O'Neill | Nov 18, 2013 | Agile, Flow, Scrum
From
Essential Scrum by Kenneth S. Rubin:
[…]the ScrumMaster observes how the team is using Scrum and does anything possible to help it get to the next level of performance. When problems arise that the team can and should be able to solve, the ScrumMaster’s attitude, like that of any good coach, is “I’m not here to solve your problems for you; instead, I’m here to help you solve your own problems.”
by Michael O'Neill | Nov 16, 2013 | Agile, Flow, Scrum
From
Essential Scrum by Kenneth S. Rubin:
The ScrumMaster doesn’t hire and fire and cannot dictate to the team what tasks it should do or how to do them. The ScrumMaster is also not responsible for making sure the work gets done.
by Michael O'Neill | Nov 15, 2013 | Agile, Flow, Scrum
From
Essential Scrum by Kenneth S. Rubin:
Managers need to foster an environment where people are constantly learning and adding to their skill sets. They need to make it clear that learning is not only encouraged, but is in fact a priority at the individual, team and organizational levels.
by Michael O'Neill | Oct 30, 2013 | Agile, Blog, Scrum, Writing
One of the perennial questions that development teams face is the struggle to staff a full time technical writer. Of course, I have an opinion on this…but I was quite stricken by Kenneth S. Rubin’s analysis of this very question in his book,
Essential Scrum. He frames the discussion in the context of cost-of-delay calculations, and the difference between idle work and idle workers. Consider:
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by Michael O'Neill | Oct 30, 2013 | Agile, Flow, Scrum
From
Essential Scrum by Kenneth S. Rubin:
Idle work is work that we want to do (such as building or testing something) but can’t do because something is preventing us. […] Many product development organizations focus more on eliminating the waste of idle workers than on the waste of idle work. […] In Scrum, we are acutely aware that finding the bottlenecks in the flow of work and focusing our efforts on eliminating them is a far more economically sensible activity than trying to keep everyone 100% busy.
