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Category Archives: Product Owner Stuff
Discovering the Narrative Behind Failure
Surprised by Failure? When your amazing idea results in unexpected outrage, do two things. Observe the Japanese proverb, When something goes wrong fix the process, not the blame. Then, discover the narrative. Tell the Story With 40,000 years under our belts, … Continue reading
Posted in Product Owner Stuff, Recent Posts, Scrum Master Stuff
Tagged A3 Root Cause Analysis, Agile Scrum, Kaizen, Larry Lawhead, Lean
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Value Stream Maps
Stopwatch Development? Learning to see is a bit more difficult than it may appear. If Ohno’s trainees found it hard to “see” manufacturing improvements, what’s a software manager to do? Looking over the shoulders of your development team, will only … Continue reading
New Scrum Guide – Emphasis on Values
A Classic Apple Move On July 6th the creators of the Scrum Framework (Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber) discussed their highly anticipated update. Even though the move was due to popular demand, their emphasis on Scrum Values hit me more like a … Continue reading
Posted in Product Owner Stuff, Scrum Master Stuff
Tagged Agile Scrum, Jeff Sutherland, Kaizen, Ken Schwaber, Larry Lawhead, Scrum Guide, Scrum Values
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How to Decompose a Release Plan – User Story Mapping
A while back my team overcommitted themselves on a technical debt Sprint. It became apparent we did not have a decent model to expose those pesky “unknown – unknowns”. No matter how much talking and diagramming and more talking we did, we … Continue reading
Posted in Product Owner Stuff
Tagged Agile Scrum, Larry Lawhead, planing, project management, User Story Mapping
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How to Decompose Epics & Stories
Assigning Epics effort estimates is risky business. However, since organizations usually require schedules and budgets when uncertainty is at its highest, continuously defining effort as the decomposition process evolves may work. It must be remembered, no estimate is completely accurate but this process does … Continue reading
Project Cost Example
Important Please read the previous post explaining this model, before reviewing the example below. This example uses the following steps. Adds employee salary, benefits and contractor fees as cost variables. Calculates how much these variables cost each week. Sets highest number of story points … Continue reading
Calculating Project Costs Using Story Points
Fibonacci Numbers & Dog Breeds? Managers using the cost accounting method to estimate projects are often lost when it comes to calculating the cost of Agile Scrum projects. Where the cost accounting method typically uses cost of time per project task as … Continue reading
Improper Planning – The Skeleton in the Closet
I had a long talk last week with a guy we will call Joe. He works for a company who has undertaken a large data conversion project. Mid way through that project the sponsors became very concerned about the project’s … Continue reading
Software Development Risk Management Model
Quantifying elements that make up problems creates clear pathways to action. This sample Software Development Risk Management Model creates meaningful data offering “actionable” information. Continue reading
The Analysis Disease
Commuting through LA traffic I had a chance to hear tons of recorded books, including The Wealth of Nations from Adam Smith — a couple of times. Though I’m no economist, it did set the record straight in my mind … Continue reading
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Why all this stuff?
… Because it may come in handy Here are some documents and templates I use for my analysis work when the client or company I’m working for doesn’t have requirements and use case management tools like Rational RequisitePro or Enterprise … Continue reading
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Tools
Suggestions from the Trenches Besides a good laptop or tablet PC, here’s a list of stuff I use with most of my gigs. I’ll keep adding ideas, so check-in occasionally. 1. Dictaphone – I use this when interviewing stakeholder or … Continue reading
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Templates
A Quick Word of Advice It could be that you’re working for a startup that doesn’t use Microsoft Project or any organizational software. Suppose that same company wants you to submit reports on the tasks you’ve been assigned. Now let’s … Continue reading
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Data Dictionary
Oh Yeah, Data – Poor it on! What’s a company without lots of little bits of information that need to be managed? Like the Class Diagram and Sequence Diagram, the Data Dictionary is invaluable when the system is handed-off to … Continue reading
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Sequence Diagram
“Yes Dear, we should communicate more” Communication is what the Sequence Diagram is all about. This document maps-out how each class or object communicates with other classes in the Use Case or code package. When planning or development gets this … Continue reading
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Class Diagram
Now for the Technical Fun! Depending on your technical skill level, you may or may not be asked to create Class Diagrams. Since I enjoy programming, I also enjoy creating Class Diagrams. However, I find that most programmers or architects … Continue reading
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The Use Case
He Said – She Said … If creating black-box test scripts is the most tedious job (which it is), then creating Use Cases is the most fun. As a matter of fact, if you pay attention and create a good … Continue reading
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Project Definition
What’s up with the Project Definition? The Project Definition is often your first deliverable. What goes into this document should be discussed with the client at the earliest opportunity possible. At the end of my second article, I’ve included a … Continue reading
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Workflow Diagram
And Let the Diagramming Begin! Like any diagramming process, there are various flavors of this document, but any work flow must cover six essential aspects per process: 1. When does the process begin? (If preceded by a specified process, indicate … Continue reading
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