Kane Mar

Introducing Scrumology.com

I haven’t posted here for a while, and this post is to partly explain why. I’ve been working quite hard in building my new work site which you can see, here: http://Scrumology.com Apart from containing more information about the work I do, it’s also a blog in it’s own right. Which raises the question, what are the [...]

The tale of the overflowing tea cup.

This post is for Jenny and Michelle. Jenny because she pointed out that I haven’t written a blog post for a while, and Michelle because I was discussing the topic of this post with her. More specifically, Michelle and I were discussing how, when introducing Scrum, different individuals are often at different points of learning. Some [...]

My “Why Scrum?” presentation released under Creative Commons

“Why Scrum?” is a webinar that I gave today (Friday, 26 June). This is a difficult topic to talk about because every organization has a different reason for adopting Scrum, and a 45-60 minute webinar doesn’t do it justice. The difficult nature of the talk, and the fact that I’m still tired from traveling up from [...]

My PMI presentation, “Introduction to Agile Estimating and Planning” released under Creative Commons.

My latest presentation was to the Queensland Chapter of PMI, and was a gentle introduction to “Agile Estimating and Planning.” I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Queensland Chapter for their warm welcome, and engaging discussions. You can view the presentation here, and you can find the raw materials (Keynote [...]

“What is Scrum?” presentation released under Creative Commons.

I’ve been preparing a few webinars recently in order to raise the awareness of Scrum and Agile software development in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. The idea is to host a webinar and then release the material under a Creative Commons (CC-By) license for others to use. My first webinar in the series was (appropriately) [...]

Two observations from attending JAOO in Brisbane

I had the opportunity to attend the JAOO conference in Brisbane the last few days. There were some really interesting talks and a lot of good discussions. I wanted to mention two points that were made at JAOO that have left me thinking, but first let me say a few words about the highlight of [...]

MBA: Mostly bloody awful

I’ve been listening to this absolutely fantastic pull-no-punches podcast from Australian Broadcasting Corp. about management culture, especially MBA management culture. It’s a wide ranging podcast touching on Taylorism, Outsourcing and the current financial crisis. It’s direct, scathing and totally on the money. If I had to recommend just one podcast this year … then [...]

There can be only one Scrum

The idea for this post came from an online discussion that I had regarding types of large scale Scrum. Many of the ideas that were being dicussed had already been debated within the Scrum community and resulted in the concept that “there can be only one Scrum.” Although these ideas have all be talked about [...]

Technical debt presentation at the Brisbane Scrum Users Group.

Update: I’m releasing the presentation under the Creative Commons (cc) by 3.0 license. This basically means that you can remix, edit or create derivative works of this presentation, provided that you attribute it to me, and the artists whose work (photographs) I’ve used. The license allows you to use it for profit, so you can [...]

Beyond Continuous Integration … Continuous Deployment at IMVU and a tale from Pirum

I’ve just finished reading an excellent article on Continuous Deployment. This is the way of the future. Now that Continuous Integration has become (almost) mainstream and as expectations for services to be “always on” becomes the norm, the interest and demand for practices such as Continuous Deployment (CD) will increase. With CD, the cost of [...]

Brian Marick gives advice on getting invited to talk.

How do you go about getting invited to speak at conferences? The other day Brian Marick mentioned that his conference submissions seldom get rejected. I was curious so I asked him why. He mentioned several reasons included the fact that he usually gets invited to speak! My own track record for speaking at conference [...]

Announcing the first CSM course in Perth, Australia (April 1st & 2nd)

Update: I’m happy to announce that the Perth CSM course has been confirmed and will definitely go ahead. Here’s the official Scrum Alliance page: http://www.scrumalliance.org/courses/4483-certified-scrummaster I’ve been talking to Brendan Power in Perth, and he’s talked me into exploring a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course there. It’s scheduled for April 1st and 2nd. The course is still [...]

BBC: How we make websites …

I love this article from Michael Smethurst at the Beebs Radio Labs entitled “How we make websites.” It’s really nice to see a collection of good practices all put together. If you’re pressed for time I suggest skipping the presentation at the start … it’s good, but I found the rest of the article to [...]

Distributed Scrum

I once worked for a company that prided itself of doing distributed agile. The vision was to have one team split across two different country so that work could continue around the clock. They had the development team in Chicago and a testing team in India. Work completed in Chicago at the end of the [...]

Australian CSM Courses for 2009

After a few months off from client related work, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. A few years ago, I did a tour of Europe which was a fantastic experience. This year I’ll be doing a tour of Australia, and quite possibly New Zealand later in the year. This is exciting [...]

Self organization is chaos

Update: I’ve just noticed that Jeff Sutherland also has an article on self organization, should you wish to explore this topic in more detail. Road traffic in Vietnam is reputed to be some of the worst in the world. It’s chaotic and confusing. Drivers do not follow basic traffic principles, vehicles do not yield right of [...]

The top five reasons companies adopt scrum

omeone asked me recently what where the five top reasons why companies adopt Scrum. I had difficulty answering this question, because, without doing a reasonably rigorous survey it’s difficult to provide a comprehensive answer. I do however, have some experience with companies adopting Scrum and I could provide the top five reasons that I’ve personally [...]

Two interesting testing links.

Here’s a great article about Meetup’s Dead Simple User Testing. What I find really interesting about the article is the attitude that testing should be more than something that’s done once before a release. Rather, it should be something that’s integrated as an ongoing activity: This goal is to look for obvious improvements continuously, rather than [...]

The top five organizational impacts due to Scrum

ntroducting Scrum leads to organization change. The specific details of how an organization changes is different for every organization. There is however a number of changes that most organizations will experience as they migrate to Scrum. These are the top five organizational changes that I’ve seen when implementing Scrum. Timesheets. Scrum teams don’t “do” timesheets. [...]

The top five ways to survive Scrum

ver the last few years we’ve seen the introduction of Agile software development into the mainstream. In 2006 the Agile Alliance are claimed that Agile frameworks had crossed the chasm. Frameworks such as Scrum have been seized upon by management and they are the ones who are now controlling the introduction of Agility. The reasons for [...]