Category Archives: scrum

“Is Scrum Evil?” Beyond our session at XP Day Paris

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Our session “Is Scrum Evil?” at XP Day Paris this year went well. Attendance was good (50 people or so). One participant called it an “eye opener“. Two recorded the discussion (one of the records is available, in French, here; … Continue reading →

Posted in scrum, xpday | 6 Comments

30,000 ScrumMasters and 1,500,000 members of Scrum Teams?!

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

A look on the ScrumAlliance list of Certified ScrumMasters shows that they have 618 pages each containing 50 names of ScrumMaster. This means more than 30,000 CSMs as of Novembre, 3rd, 2008. According to an interview of Jeff Sutherland, for … Continue reading →

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Is Scrum Evil?

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

This was a fascinating discussion facilitated by Jeffrey at CITCON Amsterdam. Much talking with him followed, so I think I finally understand why he introduced this topic, and why so many people seemed to dislike Scrum. This was a typical discussion … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, scrum | 20 Comments

A4 Reports as Iteration Reports

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Many people have asked me to talk about the A4 Reports that I have introduced on one of our projects. I’ve postponed this for a look time, but I finally got around to do it. The idea came from the … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, scrum, valtech | 3 Comments

How to handle bugs in the Sprint Backlog

Posted on February 3, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

During the Scrum trainings I give at Valtech Training, I often get asked how the bugs should be estimated. Sometimes, the question is about various architecture tasks or GUI updates.

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(Somewhat) Agile, finally

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Well, it took 5 long months, but I can finally honestly say that we are doing (some) Scrum things on my current project. I joined the project in February this year. My first idea was to convince the project lead … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, scrum, valtech | 2 Comments

Visit by Jean Tabaka

Posted on February 8, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

This week, Jean Tabaka from Rally Dev came to teach Scrum to my colleagues from Valtech. In the evening, she gave a talk on her book, Collaboration Explained. I have been very impressed by Jean’s easy-going personality. As most people … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, scrum, valtech | 2 Comments

Use Multiple Sprint Backlogs

Posted on January 26, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

How many Sprint Backlogs do you have? We have one for the entire project, and I must admit that there is no good reason for that. As it appears, the general recommendation is to have one per team. Benefits: each … Continue reading →

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Scrum is hard… and some people will vote against it with their feet

Posted on January 4, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

In a previous post, I mentioned that Paul Julius was seeing a 30% turn over after Agile practices are introduced. Apparently, this is also expected by Ken Schwaber. This sounds quite contradictory to one the reasons for adopting Scrum, mentioned … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, scrum | 2 Comments

Team split into feature teams, after all

Posted on September 18, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

You might remember from a previous post that I was regretting the fact that the development team had not wished to split into feature teams. I even suggested that it should not have been an option to them. Well, be … Continue reading →

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Luke, I’m your ScrumMaster

Posted on August 28, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I am now a Certified ScrumMaster.

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How To Show Sub-Iterations in the Iteration Backlog

Posted on July 13, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Once issue that we have with our customer is the definition of iterations. They want us to work with 6-week iterations, and release a previously-agreed scope at the end of the 6-weeks. The reasons for this according to them is … Continue reading →

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Team Did Not Split In Feature Teams

Posted on July 13, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

On our project, there is a total of 21 tech people (plus managers and translators). 3 of us are onshore. 18 offshore. You would expect this to lead to a natural split into 4 teams, right? 1 onshore, 3 teams … Continue reading →

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First Retrospective Meeting

Posted on June 28, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Last Monday, we held the first retrospective meeting on our project. I had pushed for it to take place, and I thought it would go better than the Sprint Review. As it happened, it did not. First, I contacted people … Continue reading →

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First Sprint Review

Posted on June 20, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Today, I organized the first Sprint Review for our project. This was not something that we had planned in advance. I did mention it a couple of weeks ago to the people in Valtech, but I did not take the … Continue reading →

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