Agile Continuous Improvement

I've read these days a book called Gemba Kaizen , written by Masaaki Imai, a book focusing on how to continuously improve different business fields. The book shows multiple case studies from around the world met in different companies and the main idea is about applying Lean principles Gemba refers to the place where value is created and Kaizen relates to continuous improvement. So the book refers to continuous improvement in a working environment. The general idea is that in Gemba problems are visible and the best improvements will come directly from there, by doing a gemba walk - Taiichi  Ohno developed this concept. A gemba walk is the action to see the actual process, understanding the work, asking questions and learn. It is a fundamental part of Lean Management philosophy. What was interesting to me reading this book is to see how Lean principles can be implemented in other business fields also and how everyone can benefit from Toyota Production System, as industri...

In a previous article, I wrote about Engaging Retrospectives Now that July is here and feeling the holiday mood from the office I thought it might be a good idea for a thematic retrospective with my team. So I tried the Sailboat format My retrospective went smoothly and the team enjoyed it Below are some benefits that I noticed when using this technique: - It is very simple and does not need preparation, besides drawing of course - Teams like storytelling and this theme gives a nice and relaxing atmosphere - Team bonding, emphasize the idea of sailing together as a team - Can be made independent, does not matter how the sprint went - Can be applied also for projects, not only for sprints - You can discover positive perceptions, which were the impediments or what slowed down the sprint but also what to be avoid - You can see if there are other perceptions for Ideal Destination, as a team How you run it? Keeping the 5 steps structure in mind from Diana Lersen book : ...

There is a say: "Scrum is Simple but Not Easy". Especially when working with a team during a longer period of time there comes the 'Engaging' retrospectives challenge.  Speaking about sprint retrospectives, we all know how important those are. We are in an empirical process where we want teams to become better and better. They can be a place for building and enabling teams, a place for learning, problem solving, having fun and motivating each other. After a while, when the team is used to the same retrospective format, might become a challenge for Scrum Master to facilitate the sprint retrospective in a way to engage all team members. My question is How do you make your retrospectives engaging? I realized that keeping the same classic retrospective format does not help me - the old way of answering what went well and what can be improved, leads to boredom and routine. And so, soon I found out that Diversity is the key I started to document m...

When it comes to the new year we think about new resolutions too..new goals, projects, new thoughts and implicitly new work to do. But before you decide to make a New Year’s resolution make sure that you are willing to really put in the work and commit to making a change.  Setting up New Year's Resolution and achieving goals can be done in an Agile Way and b elow you can find some tips that can help you achieving your goals: Start with a retrospective  We can see the new year like a new iteration - a restart moment. You can think about  restarting your practices, habits, your mindset or your attitude. But restarting comes after learning so first , start your year with a retrospective of the last year - start your year with last year's learnings.  Reflect about how things went and think what you would try differently this year.  Stop for a moment to ask yourself: - What do I want to accomplish this year? - How do I want to behave thi...

Scrum is an empirical approach for managing work by allowing teams to inspect their progress and adapt their plans to reach a desired outcome, defined by 5 Events (Ceremonies). In this article I will briefly examine every Scrum Event as from my point of view they are crucially important in Scrum. You can see a visual representation of how the Scrum Events work together, below: Product Backlog Refinement First event for the preparation of the next iteration, represents the act of adding new Product Backlog Items, Details, Estimates and Prioritization in the Product Backlog. It is an ongoing process in which the team together with the Product Owner collaborate on the details, refine and revise it. It is the first step to work towards the product vision and the outcome of the refinement event is a prioritized list with Product Backlog items which are well understood by the team - called Product Backlog. From my experience it is important to have a shared understanding abo...

Did you encounter the situation when you are almost at the end of the sprint and you are not sure if the sprint goal will be delivered as everything is in progress? You know, that moment when almost nothing is Done on the board, the burndown chart looks awful, stakeholders are asking you if your team will deliver the sprint commitment but everything is in progress Yes, this is a common issue when it comes to Scrum teams and tracking sprint progress. Well to solve this, the first question is: Why is everything in progress? And you might have one (or a mix) of the following answers: Multiple User Stories in progress from beginning - devs are taking multiple User Stories from the sprint beginning, they are working on small parts which are not testable entirely   Multitasking people – people love multitasking and it is in their nature to do frequent switch of context, starting new User Stories and not finishing them   QAs not in sync with Devs – parts of Us...