Andrea Keeble of VersionOne recently asked me a couple of pretty good questions about Agile maturity for teams.

1. When is it time to move beyond spreadsheets, whiteboards and sticky notes?
2. Pros & cons of free agile tools (versus high-end ones)?
3. Is there a need for something in between, which extends visibility beyond the dev team and can easily scale as you grow?

When doing training or client work, I’m also often asked these same types of questions. Most often it revolves around:

“When can we move to a tool? What’s the best tool? Etc etc…”

Let’s discuss a couple of these, shall we?

When to go to an Agile Scrum tool?

I still believe with all my heart that wallboards are king for Agile. Plain and simple. But… as teams scale and departments need better tracking and transparency, tools have their place.

Simply put, the best time to move to a tool is when the following happens:

1. Communication/reporting is needed to teams and management beyond local teams (geographically disperse)
2. Dependencies/constraints are part of the environment (dev ops tools are good here too)
3. When pretty reports mean a ton to management and stakeholders (seriously, sometimes this is a critical piece. If you have beautiful looking reports generated by a system… it totally beats making your own crappy powerpoint deck)
4. When a team is mature enough to streamline it’s processes and using a tool is more expedient (and valuable) than a physical wallboard
5. When a team is mature enough that a team is more efficient utilizing a high-performance enterprise tool (but does NOT replace collaboration)

Pros/Cons of Free Agile Tools?

You get what you pay for. This old adage is still true for tools. Sometimes it’s just worth paying $ for a great tool that work… especially if it has exactly what you need.

The problem though, is what I consider a typical enterprise tool conundrum… also known as a “Microsoft Problem.” — I mean, really… how often do you use all the features of Word? Excel? Powerpoint? = BLOAT

Most tools come with too many features that:

1. Confuse teams
2. Are unusable
3. Are not configurable
4. Beyond the team maturity
5. Beyond the companies maturity

Ever read the Tyranny of Choice by Scientific American? Please read it:

Yes. Here is the problem. TOO MANY OPTIONS CAUSE US to be ineffective.

As Agile Teams Mature… Your Toolset Matures

What we need is a tool that has JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT of features that a team can use. No bloatware. No extra junk. What we need is a tool to help us as a team grow… we can always upgrade to an enterprise edition later…

What would I like to see?

1. A tool that… if used correctly can help a new/beginning Agile team become MORE effective (after they’ve mastered the foundational elements of Agile)
2. A tool that… can make work more streamlined… without being a bother
3. A tool that… has just the right amount of features for a team
4. A tool that… is NOT free… but priced just right
5. A tool that… is supported by a solid company and will continue to iterate and grow

“A fool with a tool… is still a fool.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Don’t be a fool with a tool. Agile ALM companies would take heed about being valuable to companies. Being smart about the features teams really use… and how to help teams grow.

As I’ve reviewed more Agile/Scrum tools than anyone else on the planet… I’m looking for a tool that helps teams grow… and grows as a tool as the team matures. Is that even possible???

Or… how about a tool that enables teams to use just the core functionality of what an Agile team needs… and then can upgrade (features/modules) as they grow and mature as a team???

We’ll see.

What are your thoughts?

---

You just finished reading Agile Scrum Tools - A Tool that Helps Teams Grow?! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

A product launch begins when *everyone* involved can say what truly makes your product outstanding and awesome.

No, that’s not a typo.

I didn’t mean “product launch ends” – because if you begin developing product without clarity on this, no telling when you’ll launch.  Or what will launch.  Or who you should be launching to…

Cheers!

---

You just finished reading Essence of the Main Thing! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

In my monthly magazine subscription to INC. this April’s edition had some interesting reads. One of which stated that based on Sphere Trending from Inforum, it looks like office space is getting smaller and smaller as the years progress.

This could be one of many reasons:

• We’re going back to factory-style work values (i.e. we’re just cogs)
• A loss of value of personal space…
• Management value is diminishing…
• Real estate costs and corporate budgets for offices…
• Or… that working closely together in an agile-like fashion is vogue…

Probably it’s none of the above! — We’ve written a lot about open offices and office space before below:

• Best way to have an office is an OPEN OFFICE
• DO NOT have an open office
• Why I like open offices

What do you think?

---

You just finished reading Office Space Shrinking... Good for Agility?! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

“I don’t always test my code… but when I do, I do it in production.”

#LOL

---

You just finished reading [Fun] - I Don't Always Test My Code...! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

• How to use analytics and blog search tools to create content (SEO)
• Peter Saddington and his next book on Agile will be published in late 2012!
• Peter Saddington will be speaking on scaling product ownership at Agile 2012!
• Personal kaizen of self – Grow your craft!
• The future of recruiting is cultural understanding
• Jack Welch on Opportunity
• Extraordinary teams are lead by extraordinary leaders
• Don’t create a ceiling for your organization

---

You just finished reading Retrospective 86 - Agile Publishing and Agile 2012 Speaking! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

To be a successful blogger and attract more traffic to your blog, you must write about things that are interesting to your readers and that are worthy of being shared.  How do you learn which things are most important to your readers?  Essentially, we are looking for topics that your readers in your specialty will want to share with their friends or business colleagues.

There are several tools that can help us to learn which topics are most important to your readers.  First, we are assuming that your blog is about a highly specialized set of topics.  The narrower the focus the more likely you are to attract dedicated readers.   We also assume that you are posting on a regular basis.  Research shows that bloggers who post at least two to three times a week will build a growing and dedicated readership.

Analytic tools such as Google Analytics or Adobe Site Catalyst track the number of visitors and which key words they use to find your blog through natural search.  Using your site analytics you can see the number of people who visit your site for each keyword.  Go through your analytics results and choose the top 100 keyword phrases that receive the largest number of visitors.  These key words will become the most popular topics that you can write about for your readers.

In case your blog is new or has few visitors you won’t have a lot of analytic data to study.   The next useful tool will be social media search tools like Monitter.com.  This allows to search Twitter for the most popular topics in your area. Here are more useful tools for finding popular blog topics that you can use to start writing your own blog posts.

• Twitter Advanced Search allows you to find topics or blog posts that have more retweets or to search for tweets with positive sentiment.
• Whos Talkin searches blogs, social networks, social bookmark sites or video networks like YouTube for posts related to your keyword search. This is a versatile tool that searches many sites.
• 48ers Realtime Social Search will search only Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg and Delicious.
• Google Blog Search allows a keyword search that turns up blogs that cover your keyword topic.
• Bing Social Search Bing Social search can search Twitter and Facebook, which even shows the number of people who have shared a link on Facebook. This can be a useful indicator of how popular a topic may be on Facebook.
• Google Discussion Search finds discussions about your keyword topic within forums.
• Buzzzy searches Google Buzz, and lets you filter the updates by the source – Twitter, FriendFeed or Facebook.

Use these tools to learn what keyword topics may earn you the most sharing of your blog posts. Writing about the most popular topics can broaden your exposure to new readers and increase the number of readers who share your blog with their contacts in their social networks. As you write each new keyword topic blog post, make sure to use the keyword topic once in the blog headline, once in the first paragraph, in the blog tags, blog page title and blog post  description. This search engine optimization will align your blog post so that search engines index your blog post for the correct keyword topic.

People want to share information with their friends. Use these research tools to make your blog posts popular and worthy of being shared. This is a powerful strategy for increasing your blog readership.

---

You just finished reading How to Use Analytics and Blog Search Tools to Choose Blog Writing Topics! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

It’s been a long road since I first got rejected by many publishers and finally self-published and then grabbed Wiley’s attention!

#win

---

You just finished reading The Agile Pocket Guide - Peter Saddington - Now on Amazon for Pre-Order!! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

Yup. I’ll be speaking about Scaling Product Ownership with the Department of Defense and United States Air Force. I also have to submit a nice IEEE formatted paper on the Experience Report.

I’ll be in Room Ft. Worth 7 — time: Wednesday 16:00 – 16:30. Sounds delicious.

See you there!

---

You just finished reading Agile 2012 - August 13-17, 2012 - Scaling Product Ownership at the DoD! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

I’ve written a lot previously about kaizen of self. Continual learning and growing.

• Kaizen – Continuous Improvement on Self – Keep learning!
• Preparing an Organization to Innovative
• Being Part of the Agile Community Means Transparency
• Practice Agile – Practice Makes Permanent 

As an Agile Coach, that means that we have to continuously live by what we preach.

We need to keep learning. Period.

Sometimes that means… reading and learning about stuff that will help you be a more effective coach… even if (initially) it may seem dry and boring. Sounds crazy? Well see what I’m reading to help me with a lean-warehouse expansion project. It actually is quite enlightening!

Grow yourself. You’ll appreciate it in the end.

---

You just finished reading Personal Kaizen of Self - Grow Yourself! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

• A Personality Profile Isn’t Enough to Understand Team Culture
• Retaining top talent for your business
• Alvin Toffler – On Learning
• Business Optimization through human capital
• Agile in hardware projects
• Top 5 Questions about search engine optimization

Weekly Commenters:

• Ken ‘classmaker’ Ritchie (7)
• Jordan (3)
• Houston Inc (1)
• Ilan Goldstein (1)
• Karol McCloskey (1)

---

You just finished reading Retrospective 85 - Personality Profiles, Retention of Employees, and Learning! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---