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Man vs. Machine

Feb 8, 2019
2 min

Man vs. Machine

I read an interesting comparison this morning. Pretend for a minute that you are a business owner. You decide that you are going to invest in a new piece of machinery. Something really special that you are going to base the success of your business on. Let’s say it costs you $500,000 to purchase this magical widget maker. If you invest that much in a piece of equipment, you aren’t likely to let it breakdown. In fact, you are very likely going to be well motivated to invest fu

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Simplicity of Measure

Oct 19, 2014
1 min

Simplicity of Measure

I got a fitbit bracelet the other day. It’s a pretty nifty gadget. It tracks the number of steps that I take in a day, as well as measuring movement while I’m asleep. I’ve been very impressed with the number of things that you can derive from a simple measure of the frequency of movement. You get number of steps, activity level, calories burned, sleep periods, and a few other metrics. All of that from one simple measure of how often my hand moves. Admittedly, some of those m

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Aug 2, 2008
1 min

Using the Agile Cookie Cutter

How would you set up your next project? What would you require? I know what I’ve tried in the past – here’s a brief inventory of my standard Scrum Toolkit: New Artifacts: Team Working Agreement Team Definition of Done Task Board Burn down chart Impediments list Release Plan Backlog New Meetings: Sprint Planning Daily Standup Sprint Review Sprint Retrospective Backlog grooming New Concepts: Stories Story points Sprints Releases TDD Continuous Integration Cross Functional Teams

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Information Density and Project Tracking

May 30, 2008
2 min

Information Density and Project Tracking

One complaint that I hear from people who don’t like a given project tracking tool is that there is actually too much information on the screen at once. They find it distracting and it makes it hard to find the really relevant information. In response, usually I nod my head sagely, mumble something obscure, and move on. But when I give my talk on the pros and cons of using physical vs. electronic project tracking tools I neglect to mention this difference. If I stop for a min

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Agile Planning Tools Revisited

Dec 5, 2007
2 min

Agile Planning Tools

A few notes on this list: I tried to collect just the tools that are written specifically for the purpose of Agile planning. I know that a lot of teams use 3×5 cards and/or Excel for tracking and managing their projects. However, although you can use Excel to manage your planning process, Excel was not created with Agile planning in mind. So Excel doesn’t belong on this list. There are plenty of planning products that make the claim of being compatible with Agile planning. Fo

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Dec 4, 2007
3 min

Rally vs. Scrumworks

My first impression is that these are two applications that have come from very different backgrounds. ScrumWorks started off as a java based desktop application. Rally is based on an ASP model where the application and data are all hosted at a remote site. Both applications have grown their feature sets over the last two years with what appears to be 2 different objectives in mind. Rally has taken the approach of adapting to a wide range of customer needs, both Agile and tra

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Task Boards: Telling a Compelling Agile Story

Nov 24, 2007
8 min

Task Boards: Telling a Compelling Agile Story

The task board is the single most important information radiator that an agile team has. A task board illustrates the progress that an agile team is making in achieving their sprint goals. Usually the task board is located in an area that is central to the team. For example, it’s in their work area or in the war room where they hold their stand-up meetings. I would maintain that the task board is an expression of the personality of the team. Some teams operate in a very minim

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