Justin York – Simdesk

“Del's leadership was instrumental in bringing agile methodologies to our development team. While transitioning to scrum, I often consulted with Del about how to handle things in the scrum framework. Once our team was fully running on scrum, I felt that we were at least twice as productive as we had been in the past.”

Matt Willson – Pervasive Software

“As Delmar's manager for over a year, I was very impressed with the simplicity of his designs, the quality of his software, and the tenacity he brought to problem solving, especially customer issues. Delmar provided strong leadership for the developers who worked under his tutelage.”

Steve Mook – Pervasive Software and Simdesk

"Del is experienced,enthusiastic and tenacious - an excellent team lead with expertise in UI design and development and Scrum project management. He is willing to learn new technologies, challenge assumptions, take risks, and be accountable for results. His skill and leadership would benefit any team that seeks to improve its ability to deliver value to customers and to the business."

My Agile Experience

What was really exciting was to see the Scrum methodology adopted company wide at Simdesk. Because of the success of our team I was able to train and mentor other team leads, managers and corporate executives to use Scrum. This lead to increased productivity and better communication among the teams, support, product managers and upper management. Goals are well defined and consistently meet.

Tags

adoption architecture books build change collaboration deploy design integratoin learning management release safety team Team Member team safety training user stories

My Reading List

Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins (Paperback - June 14, 2010)

Available on safaribooksonline.com as a Rough Cut.

Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum [Book] by Mike Cohn - Addison Wesley

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders - Paperback (Jan. 16, 2006) by Jean Tabaka

Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) Roman Pichler

Practices of an Agile Developer by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt - Pragmatic Book Shelf

Mar
23

Vision

By Delmar Hager

Where there is no vision, the people perish Proverbs 28:19

The ancient proverb could be restated in development as “Where there is no vision the project fails”.

It is important the every product has a vision. The vision makes the intangibles of the project understandable. The vision gives the road map of the who, why, what and when of the project.

  • Who are our customers
    We must understand who will be using our product. Product focused on actual customer requirements will help keep it lean and easier to develop.
  • Why is the product being developed
    Again this focuses on the customer.  There must be a compelling reason for this product. Will it help the customer to be more efficient in their work? Are we working to keep ahead of the competition by providing innovative features?
  • What are the critical features of this new product
    Do you know what is needed to make the product a success? What are the top priority features the customer desires.
  • When do we need to deliver
    The time box constraint. Product must be delivered to the customer for it to be useful.

The vision can always be referenced when there are decisions to be made about the product backlog. It helps set priorities and make sure the the most critical features are released.

With out the vision how can the team know when they have reached their goal?

Categories : Adoption, Agile