This weekend, a friend of mine showed me a cool little piece of software called Lifetick that helps you set, track, and achieve your goals. I played around with it for a while and realized, this is a little too much for me. Setting goals and achieving them should be simple, and not something that requires some software to help you do it.

I think that sometimes, we try to set too many goals for ourselves or our projects and that is what gets us into trouble. So, whether you’re setting personal goals or goals for your team’s next iteration, keep it simple. In that way, you can really focus on achieving a single simple goal. If you’re on an agile team and trying to set goals for your next release or iteration, here are a few simple ways to set your goals and achieve them without the use of software. And if you’re not on an agile team, my guess is, these little tactics may help you with whatever goals you have as well.

Read more »

Over the course of long projects (and some short ones too), the shared understanding of the project, release, or even iteration goals can drift.  Different team members remember or interpret project aspects differently over time.  This drift can result in producing a final product that doesn’t satisfy your client’s expectations.  So how do we counter drift throughout the life of a project?  Some say “Write a vision statement and stick it on the wall?”.  I’m not a big fan of “statements”.  I think people get lost in them, and statements, over time, can be open to interpretation as well.

Short of a unifying statement of sorts, how else can you keep your team synchronized with the goal’s of the project, release or iteration?    That’s where the beauty of agile practices comes in.  There are several practices which foster a cohesive, shared understanding of the goals: the iteration planning meetings, the iteration review, the retrospectives…but none more than the daily stand-up.  I think the daily stand-up helps anchor agile teams to their goals more than anything else.  On a daily basis, drift is kept in check by synchronizing the work underway.  If teams treat their daily stand-ups more as a synchronization conversation rather than a status report, I think the daily stand up can go a long way towards preventing drift from happening.

Read more »

I was reading an interesting story about the famed American financier, banker, and philanthropist J.P. Morgan today.  It went something like this:

A man approached J.P. Morgan, held up an envelope, and said, “Sir, in my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly sell to you for $25,000.” J.P. Morgan replied, “I do not know what is in the envelope, however if you show me, and I like it, I give you my word as a gentleman that I will pay you what you ask.” The man agreed to the terms, and handed over the envelope. J.P. Morgan opened it, and extracted a single sheet of paper. He gave it one look, then handed the piece of paper back to the man and promptly paid him the agreed-upon $25,000.  Here’s what was on the paper: Read more »

I am the ScrumMaster on our current project, and this morning I had to miss our Daily Scrum meeting. Our lead architect and I were invited to participate in a local Technology Incubator meeting that we felt was very important to our office’s growth and development. When we returned to the office, the Team was hard at work diligently tackling the tasks on our current Sprint Backlog. I visited each Team member and asked “Did you guys do a Scrum today?” After some foot shifting, the general answer was “Um…no.” I think they knew what was coming next. “So why didn’t you Scrum?” “Well, you and Dave weren’t here.” So…what’s wrong with this picture?

The Daily Scrum is a meeting at which the Team answers the three basic questions: Read more »