Monday, May 11, 2009

Warning: Scrum can cause pain

The model proposed by Scrum is so simple that bottom-up feedback is immediate and many times could cause some pain. The Stand-up daily meetings (A.K.A. Scrum meetings) expose to the organization the productivity impediments and organizational inefficiencies. The intention of this outstanding almost real-time feedback is to allow the organization to correct and remove impediments in a record time.

Smart managers will use this information for re-engineering processes and correct organizational defects while identifying the possibilities to improve in a continuous identification framework.

Some impediments that may appear not to be obvious are:

  • Workers that need training in the technology (blockers under-estimated)
  • Unclear Priorities in the Backlog
  • Team members are assigned and committed to other tasks
  • Inadequate design
  • Lack of commitment and team participation

However, not everybody is prepared to deal with this pain. While some managers can take this as a huge opportunity to improve and excellence, others can be afraid and be resistive and blind over the evidence and express: "Just tell me when will be done" , "This Scrum thing is not for us, our culture is different" (sic)

Some organizations prefer to be less than efficient while they are comfortable due to their margins due to the unique products in the market niche they are. They have the waste of abusing of excessive meetings, organizations based on hierarchies, excessive management and incompetence.

But this is a fast world. The market will ensure that agile companies with new technology or more efficient organizations just defeat the inefficient ones.

Source: Agile Ways Consulting Group

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

The Agile Way..

I am very happy to announce my new company web site:

Agile Ways Consulting Group

Little by little I'll be posting new articles and blog's entries there.

The objective of Agile Ways is to provide advice and help to companies that need to profit in an agile world. By the way, the first article here.