Fun with Agile…Really

Hello Folks,

Welcome back to another episode of “Exploring Agile”. Today we will be taking advantage of the universally loved YouTube.  While I will admit that this cartoon is no Conjunction Junction, it does a nice job of simply conveying the Scrum version of Agile Methodology.  The video is eight and half minutes long, with the last minute and a half being a plug.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJflDE6OaSc

For those of you not willing to invest the seven minutes, I have provided a brief outline of the content;

Reasons to use Agile;

  • Focuses on prioritized customer value
  • Mitigates risk by involving customers during incremental development called Sprints
  • Minimizes Time to Market
  • Promotes Certainty or Deliverable Confidence
  • Increases Revenue

Project Management Agile (Scrum) Process;

  • Create a Product Backlog comprised of;  User Story’s (user/customer needs)
  • Hold a Sprint Planning Meeting (Scrum Master and Project team)
    • Reviews User Story’s and inquires about additional pertinent details
    • Prioritizes User Story’s from Project Backlog to create a Sprint Backlog
    • Hold Daily Stand-Up Meetings to status;
      • Yesterday’s activities
      • Today’s activities
      • Current Obstacles and Roadblocks
      • Records Progress in Sprint Backlog
      • Charts Progress on a “Burn-down Graph”

      End of Sprint Review Meeting – Present completed deliverables to customer

      Launch Sprint #1 Deliverables

    • Conduct Informational Interviews to get
      • Feedback
      • Missed deliverables
      • Desirable Enhancements
    • Sprint Retrospective Meeting
      • What did or did not work well: identify areas for improvement
      • Start the Process again

One thought on “Fun with Agile…Really

  1. This post made me think about the similarities between Agile Project Management and Lean/Toyota Production System. In my role as a Lean Transformation Specialist, I facilitate week-long Rapid Improvement Workshops (RIW) to analyze and improve processes with an interdisciplinary team of people (physicians, nurses, etc).

    A Rapid Improvement Workshop is similar to a Sprint Planning Meeting, except there is a facilitator and an improvement team instead of a scrum master and project team. The team reviews the current state and the future state versus yesterday’s activities and today’s activities. We also conduct informational interviews with process experts and present our findings to our (internal) customers. However, the Sprint backlog would contain observations from the Gemba (place where the work is done) rather than users story’s.

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