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Are our thoughts belong to us?
Thinking is something we always do without we feel, it is like breathing, we take it for granted. We can’t be alive without breathing, but can we become better if we stop thinking?
In his book “Stop Thinking Start Living“, the late Richard Carlson described that thoughts are the origin of negative feelings which can lead to wrong actions. In his classic “The Power of Positive Thinking“, Norman Peale emphasized on positive thinking as the key driver for man’s flourish and growth. Read more…
Kanban for Scrum Implementation
Two weeks ago I met a client, who is transforming to Scrum, his biggest concern was that people may leave!
Showing lot of respect to his opinion, I sensed that he had ever increasing attrition of developers. I stopped short from even mentioning what Scrum prescribes, though he was specifically asking to implement Scrum. I didn’t want to mention dedicated teams, freeze changes during the sprint or release planning, or other practices which I practiced and value.
Rather than being interviewed myself, I began to interview him. He had projects to be delivered at Fixed scope and Fixed schedule. He was worrying that a Scrum specialist would start pushing Scrum practices causing unpredicted impact on his environment.
For his surprise, I suggested that to hold our horses and don’t think Scrum or any other tool. I suggested to implement a gradual process improvement function that would allow solving the business problem he mentioned and continuously improving his capability to respond to customer’s varying needs. He was already preoccupied about using sprints, velocity, backlogs and other artifacts of Scrum. I suggested that he might like to consider Lead Time as the primary metric driving his continuous improvement activities. I emphasized that we don’t rule out the use of Scrum or any other tool.
Based on what we would discover we can decide on what to implement, instead of just go Scrum! Read more…
