As an exercise to understand how I want this new material to look and feel, I took the very first topic (Absolute Estimating vs. Relative Estimating) and created a presentation to go along with the audio. This is my first draft, with an unprocessed (for noise reduction or effects) audio. I think it’s a big improvement from what I’ve done before.

I’d love to hear you thoughts and opinions, so feel free to leave a comment below.

In issue 4 of the five questions series we hear from Alistair Cockburn.

Alistair is a leading agile evangelist and book author and recently presented a number of sessions at the Orlando Scrum Gathering, including the “panel of 5” open discussion with the likes of Ken Schwaber, Mike Cohn, Ron Jeffries and Jim Coplien.

Alistair is currently working alongside Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland and absorbing their thoughts and ideas, some of which are un-written. Alistair is an excellent wordsmith and is hoping to articulate in more detail some of the details of Scrum and its implementation. An example of this is the term “Scrum is a mirror” which you will see Alistair refer to in his answers below. This term refers to Scrum acting as a mirror into your organisation and identifying impediments and issues that need resolutions. So without any more delay I give you Dr. Alistair Cockburn… A big thank you to Alistair for taking the time to respond so quickly.

Bio. Alistair Cockburn was voted one of the “The All-Time Top 150 i-Technology Heroes” in 2007. He is an internationally renowned project witch doctor and IT strategist, expert on agile development, use cases, project management, and object-oriented design, author of the Crystal agile methodologies, three Jolt-awarded books, co-author of the Agile Manifesto and the project management Declaration of Interdependence, and inventor of the Initial Response Technique massage form. He is known for his lively presentations and interactive workshops. His blog, poems, articles, and talks are available online at http://alistair.cockburn.us

Alistair’s answers..

Q1. Can you describe what you would consider the top Scrum enabler in an organization?

First, willingness to look into the Scrum mirror, and second, willingness to act on what it shows.

Q2. Where do you see Scrum in 5 years time?

With very many CSMs all over the world, and with an increasing bureaucracy inside the ScrumAlliance.

Q3. What has been your toughest Scrum challenge so far?

Getting people to look into the Scrum mirror.

Q4. What makes you passionate about Scrum?

I’m not particularly passionate about Scrum. I’m passionate about helping people do better. Scrum is one tool; other tools are also helpful and also needed.

Q5. What can we learn from you about Scrum?

I watch Ken and Jeff closely and try to interpret back to the community what they’re saying / doing.

Be warned, not all of these are actually that funny. I’ve never found The Downfall of Agile Hitler to be funny, because the original film is harrowing and difficult to watch. I also find the Scrum Haka to be trite and unwatchable … this is what a real haka should look like.

So here’s the list and, once you’re done (in the words of Adam Weisbart), “Get back to work!”

Over the next couple of months I’ll be republishing all of James Brett’s 5 Questions as they appeared on his blog.

In issue 3 of the five questions series we hear from Mike Cohn.Mike is the author of some of the most successful IT books, including Agile Estimating and Planning, User Stories Applied and his upcoming new book Succeeding with Agile. A big thankyou to Mike for taking the time to squeeze these answers into his incredibly busy schedule.

Bio. Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software (www.mountaingoatsoftware.com), where he teaches and coaches on Scrum and agile development. He is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning, User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, and the upcoming Succeeding with Agile: Software Development with Scrum. With more than 25 years of experience, Mike has previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes, from startup to Fortune 40. A frequent magazine contributor and conference speaker, Mike is a founding member of the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. He can be reached at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com

Mike’s answers..

Q1. Can you describe what you would consider the top Scrum enabler in an organization?

People who want to do something better than they are doing it today. This could be a group that wants to build a product that is smaller or faster or cheaper than anyone else has ever done. Or it could be a group wants to continue to enhance their existing product or service faster, more efficiently, or with higher quality. Wherever this type of passion exists, it can be used to help Scrum take off in that organization.

Q2. Where do you see Scrum in 5 years time?

I’d like to see all of agile be the default way for doing software development. Five or so years ago a lot of the issues were around how can we plan if we’re agile and how can we do it with forty people on the project. Those issues are behind us and plenty of teams have shown us how to overcome those challenges.

Today I hear a lot of questions about how do we do Scrum on globally distributed projects, how do we do it on very large projects, how do we do it within the full organization and so on. Those issues, too, will be behind us in five years.

Q3. What has been your toughest Scrum challenge so far?

I think they’re all tough. Scrum teaches us though that we overcome the challenges by breaking large obstacles into small pieces and continuously making progress.

Q4. What makes you passionate about Scrum?

I’ve always been passionate about anything to do with software. When I spend all-day programming, I would spend all evening reading about programming or doing more programming. When I started managing or running departments, I got passionate about those aspects of software development.

I think I’m passionate about software development because it’s fun. It’s fun to create something, especially something as useful as a new piece of software can be.

Q5. What can we learn from you about Scrum?

The things that I learn from the teams I work with. All of the ideas I teach or write about are ones that I learned from working with different teams.

David’s current focus is bringing startup thinking into large organizations to foster corporate entrepreneurship. He can usually be found writing, speaking and coaching around lean startup, business model generation and kanban.

You should check out this and other great tutorials by David on his site http://www.davidjbland.com/

A Business Model Canvas is an easy to use, lightweight and powerful tool for anyone looking to sketch out business models. It is quickly becoming the preferred strategic management tool for start-up organizations.

While it is available in .pdf form from Alex Osterwalder’s site, I couldn’t help but feel that companies could benefit from an online, collaborative version of his template.

So, I asked him…

It only takes a Google Account, a few minutes of your spare time and best of all it’s free.

Create a Google Drawing

Give your drawing a background color

Select the rectangle tool

Draw a large rectangle

Select the line tool and slice the rectangle up into 9 sections

Use the text tool to add in each section label

Include the help text for each section in a lighter gray font color (optional)

Fill in the background color and create the header & footer

Create sticky images in photo editing software

Import the sticky images into the Google Drawing

Drag the images off to the gutter so they do not get in your way

Use the text tool to overlay text onto your sticky

Drag the sticky over to your business canvas

Copy, paste and move the stickies around as needed

I’ve shared the Business Model Canvas I created in this demo if you wish to get a better idea of how it is structured. It is only a guide, and you can customize it in many different ways if you like.

Over the next couple of months I’ll be republishing all of James Brett’s 5 Questions as they appeared on his blog.

In issue 2 of the five questions series we hear from one of the godfarthers of Scrum Ken Schwaber. Ken (along with Jeff Sutherland) is responsible for creating Scrum way back in the day, not only that but Ken created (or helped create) the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. Ken has produced three Scrum books that have guided so many people through the Scrum framework. So without further ado. I give you the man himself….Ken Schwaber!

Bio. I have been in software development for over thirty years, starting as an operating systems programmer. I have held positions ranging from bottle washer to cook, waiter to restaurant manger. I was a signer of the Agile Manifesto and started the Agile Alliance and the ScrumAlliance. I co-developer Scrum with Jeff Sutherland and have spent the last seventeen years understanding what it means and how to use it better. I live in Lexington, Massachusetts with my wife, Christina.

Ken’s answers..

Q1. Can you describe what you would consider the top Scrum enabler in an organization?

A passionate desire on the part of the people to do their best.

Q2. Where do you see Scrum in 5 years time?

Like Lean, except for complex development. If an organization’s people use Scrum to improve their product development practices and people, others will be unable to compete with them.

Q3. What has been your toughest Scrum challenge so far?

Undoing the habits that come from predictive processes, such as waterfall. People of my generation have this drilled into them so that, under stress, they revert to its thinking as “the thing that has always worked for me.”

Q4. What makes you passionate about Scrum?

Scrum is a framework for people to apply their maturity, intelligence, and professional skills to make their lives, their organization, and society a better and more fulfilling place to be. What more can you ask from life?

Q5. What can we learn from you about Scrum?

That change is hard and the rewards are worthwhile. What better way do we have to spend our lives?

Over the next couple of months I’ll be republishing all of James Brett’s 5 Questions as they appeared on his blog.

This is the first instalment of a brand new series of articles I will be bringing you over the next few months (or years, depending on its success). I have devised five questions that I intend to put to some of the leading lights in the Scrum industry, either famous, infamous or just those with a raft of experience. The questions are Scrum related and by asking them I hope to provide an insight into how these people think and what they think about Scrum.

The five questions are:

1. Can you describe what you would consider the top Scrum enabler in an organization?
2. Where do you see Scrum in 5 years time?
3. What has been your toughest Scrum challenge so far?
4. What makes you passionate about Scrum?
5. What can we learn from you about Scrum?

First up in the series is Ron Jefferies. Ron was involved in the original creation of the Agile Manifesto and is a leading practitioner in Agile, XP and Scrum. I hope you find Ron’s answers interesting, I know I did.

Bio: Ron Jeffries is author of Extreme Programming Adventures in C#, the senior author of Extreme Programming Installed, and was the on-site XP coach for the original Extreme Programming project. Ron has been involved with Extreme Programming for over ten years, presenting numerous talks and publishing papers on the topic. He is the proprietor of www.XProgramming.com, a well-known source of XP information. Ron was one of the creators, and a featured instructor in Object Mentor’s popular XP Immersion course. He is a well-known independent consultant in XP and Agile methods.

Ron has advanced degrees in mathematics and computer science, and has been a systems developer for more years than most of you have been alive. His teams have built operating systems, compilers, relational database systems, and a large range of applications. Ron’s software products have produced revenue of over half a billion dollars, and he wonders why he didn’t get any of it.

Ron’s answers..

Q1. Can you describe what you would consider the top Scrum enabler in an organization?

This is a bit like asking which leg of a stool is most important. Among others, any of these things can DISABLE Scrum:

1. Lack of an engaged and empowered Product Owner;
2. Failure of the team to inspect and adapt, especially in taking on good development practices such as found in XP.
3. Management or cultural refusal to permit the team a high degree of self-organization and self-management.
4. Insufficient focus on getting Done, and on improving the meaning of “Done” over time.

Q2. Where do you see Scrum in 5 years time?

Approximately where it is now, but larger. By that I mean that there will be a big pile of teams who claim that they are doing Scrum, with varying levels of success. There will be a large mass of teams who have tried Scrum, received great benefits, but nonetheless fallen away from doing it.

And there will be a near-infinite supply of teams needing the kind of help that Scrum provides. Even worse, there will be many more teams who claim that they are doing Scrum but really aren’t.

Q3. What has been your toughest Scrum challenge so far?

The biggest challenges I see are two:

First, teams whose management interfere with the process, most commonly by putting on too much pressure, resulting in work that looks good on the outside but is rotten inside. Over not very much time at all, this slows down progress and results in disillusionment with Scrum. The real problem was management mistakes, but these are not recognized.

Second, and the opposite face of the same coin, Scrum’s value can be destroyed by a team that allows management pressure to reduce their focus on internal quality. Once that focus drops far enough, progress plummets.

Q4. What makes you passionate about Scrum?

I’m not passionate about Scrum. I am passionate about learning and teaching good ways of doing software, and I believe that the values and principles that we put down in the Agile Manifesto remain the best way to do that. Scrum is one means to making software better, and the lives of those who build it better, and I like it for that. But my focus is on the people who make software and helping them make things just a bit better.

Q5. What can we learn from you about Scrum?

I like to say that my special contribution to teams is to inform them that the sensation they feel in their butt is called “pain”, and they should do something to make it go away. And I have a fair amount of skill in helping people to do that, if they’re interested to learn.

I have one complimentary (free) ticket to Scrum Australia on April 10th-11th. This is the very first regional Scrum conference, and there’s a great lineup of speakers including Kenny Rubin, Ilan Goldstein, Justin Urbanski, Matthew Hodgson, Jason Harwood, Bernd Schiffer, and many many more.

Tickets are normally $550 but if you’d like a chance to win the free ticket, then please leave a comment below or retweet this message with the tag #auscrum.

The contest will end on Friday morning at 9am (Sydney, Australia time) and I’ll use a wordpress plugin to autogenerate a single winner. Good luck!

The online jobs website, Indeed.com provides simple charts and reports lending insight. This is the graph for the percentage growth of job postings containing the phrase “Agile software”. The last six years have seen a massive 1750% growth in the number of Agile jobs advertised on the site.

Growth of jobs using the term “Agile Software”

You can download the first two chapter for free:  Improving Agility – Agile Certifications (Ch1 & Ch2)

And you can purchase the full ebook for the price of a cup of coffee.