When converting to Scrum or other Agile techniques, managers often wonder whether it will really improve productivity.  The whole process seems chaotic, so how can teams be more productive than traditional project management and development practices? This is the story of three teams in the same department and how we were able to measure their […]

Before our attention was diverted with the blockbuster acquisition of Instagram, Facebook recently caught media attention for not adding any women to its board of directors.  As a result, the women in technology leadership problem has been a hot topic around the blogosphere, which I read with avid interest. Being a former engineer, I am […]

Have you ever found yourself in a “can’t win” situation at work?  You are working hard, doing your best, but yet things still seem to be going wrong.  What do you do?  Be a superhero and try to fix it yourself?  Or do you reach out and ask for help? Contrary to popular belief, asking […]

When you start to plan a project where do you start?  Do you open MS Project and start entering tasks?  Do you start building a backlog and apply your favorite Agile planning techniques?  As I mentioned in my Best Scrum-ban-plan Board post, I have been using that board a lot for high level project planning […]

I’m in the process of writing two large articles: one for this blog and one for an online magazine.  Since my last blog post was a wild success, I thought I would follow it up with something more low-key.  Plus, it gives me more time to work on the other two articles 🙂 As my […]

Four years ago, I needed to design a Scrum board to use with my teams.  Teams moved around a lot, so I wanted something I could enlarge and laminate so we could easily roll up the scrum boards and move them.  We also didn’t have to depend on having white boards or cork boards in […]