Rahul's space

Agile India 2012: Slowing down to Speed up: Encouraging sustainable pace in teams

2011-12-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

Will be presenting at Agile India 2012 on Slowing down to Speed up: Encouraging sustainable pace in teams Find the draft presentation here and feel free to send me your comments! Here is the description: We would like solutions delivered fast without compromising quality, user experience, implicit requirements and non-functional aspects such as scalability and performance. This would have

Agile Coaching and Mentoring: Agile India 2012

2011-09-02T22:39:00.000-07:00

Submissions to the stage can be made by creating an account at: http://submit2012india.agilealliance.org/ “As Agile becomes main-stream, the values laid down by the Agile Manifesto are continuously challenged in different ways during its adoption in different situations. Great coaches help teams and organizations in facing and overcoming these challenges through various learning techniques, so

Agile or Waterfall? That is the question

2010-11-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

Are you and your team ready for the changes that agile brings?Visit the APLN Houston Website for the presentation and a "sample Agile Decision matrix" on this topic. Teams new to Agile and Scrum might find this useful. Note that this is just a starting point - it is beneficial to customize the matrix.Gave this presentation with Prashant Patel on Nov 18th, 2010.Thanks to the APLN Houston

Breaking Scrum: Scope changes within the sprint...

2010-10-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

A discussion I started on Linked:Breaking Scrum: Scope changes within the sprint...Hi, Looking a "list of reasons" on why product-owner-pushed scope change during the sprint breaks scrum... Few I can think of (please add): - Takes away the focus from the current functionality - Reduces team ownership - Impacts Quality - Impacts Velocity - Impacts sustainance of Scrum - ....... Thanks! Rahul3

Have an Initial Conversation to Start an Agile Project

2010-10-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

Based on our experience, it is essential that stakeholders be involved in deciding the approach for solution delivery. Agile and Scrum require commitment and collaboration from various stakeholders for successful delivery and customer delight. While teams inspect and adapt their ways of working through multiple iterations, efforts of multiple stakeholders need to be coordinated. Without

Mixing Product Owner and Scrum Master roles

2010-06-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Scrum Guide says that the Product Owner and Scrum Master roles should not be played by the same person. Given below are some reasons why this is not recommended in Scrum and the possible consequences of not following this recommendation.- Conflict of interest - The two roles may have conflict of interest in certain situations. Product Owner is concerned about maximizing the RoI and Scrum

How to sustain Adaptive planning

2010-02-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

Scrum and other agile methods recognize that responsiveness to change is an important aspect of delivering projects. They also recognize that software development is evolutionary and creative. By managing changes through Adaptive planning, Scrum provides a simple yet effective method of planning and tracking project progress. In this article, we will examine what is needed to sustain Adaptive

What can leaders do to enable Agile teams?

2009-11-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Top of the mind thoughts:1. Provide long term vision on where the IT department will fit in the overall value chain of the organization and how agility can help it in achieing that goal 2. If the long term intent is to go agile for majority of projects, create a transition backlog 3. Prioritize and reprioritize often 4. Inspect & adapt as you go along the journey 5. Lead by example, follow agile

Half-hearted agile

2009-11-02T11:35:00.001-08:00

Thought of penning down some of the issues I see with the projects where agile is tried via feeble mandate (lets just try it - top-down) rather than as a joint initiative between management and teams. The list will grow over time:# communication-->> Email being the preferred mode of communication rather than face to face communication-->> Unwillingness to see the bigger picture by staying within

Challenging inertia through Scrum

2009-10-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Read my article at:http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/133-challenging-inertia-through-scrum

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

2008-12-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

"A book for everyone" is how I would describe this short, easy to understand and very interesting piece of work. The secret is about the "Law of Attraction". This law states our thoughts attract everything that happens to us. The book claims that if we think positively about something with conviction and belief, that will surely happen. The universe tells us "Your wish is my command" and goes

Attacks on Mumbai

2008-11-29T03:44:00.000-08:00

I am deeply sorry for the families of those who lost their loved ones in terror attacks in Mumbai during the last three days. It was certainly not the fault of those who died that they were at that place at that time when that happened. This is also true for all the victims of other terror attacks in the past. So whose fault is it really that every now and then something like this happens,

Seamless Integration of Web Services (old article)

2008-11-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

While simply browsing I came across this article on the net, which was written jointly by George Chiramattel, Brijesh Chenan and me, many years ago (in 2002 or 2003). This one is hosted on George's blog and is titled "Seamless Integration of Web Services". It won us the Microsoft India Road Ahead Contest. I am very happy to find it again and put a link here. It is good to see that a lot of what

Agile Estimating and Planning - Mike Cohn

2008-10-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

"Agile Estimating and Planning" is a Must-Have-Read for those interested in learning a down to earth, practical approach towards Software Estimation and Planning that actually works! The advice is meant for teams that use Agile methods such as XP and Scrum. And the bonus is that this book is really very easy to read since the flow is written in such a simple and logical manner. The book starts

My first aricle on the net!

2008-08-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

Was published today on Scrum Alliance website.Read it at:http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/104-the-impact-of-scrum-mechanisms-on-people-and-task-orientation

Goa - May 2008

2008-05-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

Visiting Goa is always a relaxing experience. Earlier this month Himani and I went there. We had been there several times before, so this time the purose was to just chill out and relax. We stayed at our favorite place - Sun Village Resort at Arpora, which is very close to Baga beach. We rented a Honda Activa, which we used to extensively roam around the nearby places. Our key activity was

The Goal and It's Not Luck - Eliyahu M. Goldratt

2008-04-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

These are two phenomenal books by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, who is a thinker, educator, author, scientist, philosopher and business leader. Both books are in the form of business novels and lead us into a very unique Thinking process and Theory of Constraints. Goldratt keeps readers interested till the very end in both these books, by putting the lead character Alex Rogo many challenging situations.