People and team member management for Agile project management and Scrum software development teams.
Should you track individual performances in Scrum and how do you do it? Nanda Vivek says that there is only one answer and this is “No”. Measuring individual productivity is against the spirit of Scrum and the article discusses the importance of being helpful and collaborative in teams. The author however does not give guideline on how to deal in this case with the individual review that is a common practice in many large organizations.
You company is transitioning to Agile and you need to hire people that will bring this type of expertise to you teams. This article propose 10 questions that you could ask to assess the vision of Agile by the prospective employees. The questions are only the first step and the article also provides guidelines on how to interpret the answers. It asks for instance “Did your iterations overlap? For instance, were the testers still testing Iteration 6 while Iteration 5 was being designed/developed?” and then discussed the status of multidisciplinary teams. Even if the material is more geared towards large organizations, every agile manager will find valuable content in it.
In this blog post, Matt Archer shares his definition of the Agile Test Lead role and what he thinks they should contribute to Scrum teams. He says that behind the practical aspects of the Agile Test Lead role, there are also subtle connotations of coaching in this position. In his opinion, it is this coaching element that makes many Agile Test Leads valuable for the Scrum team they belong to.
Continuous feedback is part of basic principles of Agile project management, using techniques such as Test Driven Development (TDD), Continuous integration or daily stand-ups meetings that allow the Scrum team to share concerns about potential challenges as well as coordinate efforts to resolve difficult and/or time-consuming issues.
in this blog post, John Piekos explains how the ScrumMaster and Product Owner roles in Scrum are much more demanding than the Project and Product Manager roles of traditional project approaches. With frequent “potentially shippable product increments”, he believes that full-time effort is required from all members in order to be successful.
A CEO discusses three barriers that prevent Agile adoption: the management team, the technical team and the CEO himself.
This blog post discusses the issue of helping middle managers finding a new role in an organization that adopt agile approaches.