Category: Scrum Methodology

So what’s the big deal with carryover? Lemme tell you about WASTE

Talking to a team about carryover at a daily scrum meeting led me into a very uncomfortable confrontation with someone who already didn’t like me. Not sure why but I ascertained it had something to do with the unhealthy relationship between product and technology organizations and the fact that product was pushed by sales to make commitments on behalf of the teams that were essentially never met on time (more on that issue in a later post). So a contentious confrontation – read on…

June 19, 2017 1

Working from home is a privilege, not a right

So who isn’t a fan of working from home? Very few would openly admit to being against it. The fact of the matter is the most effective way to communicate is still face to face no matter what new tools we have (individuals and interactions over processes and tools). Does working from home have its place? Yes. Has it been abused and made us less effective as well? I think so.

November 15, 2016 8

Strategies for product owner across multiple teams (with different products)

A product owner should be dedicated to one team. Or no more than two teams working on the same product with the same product backlog. But what about a product owner who we spread across two teams with different backlogs working on different products? We’re asking them to be two people and it’s not sustainable! This product owner told me he was in 17 hours of meetings between the two teams per week (and I added it up and it was true)! For the product owner who should be splitting his/her time between self thought, stakeholder and customer input, and team time, it’s not possible for those things to be equal or sustainable not to mention the loss of productivity when context switching/multitasking. Though unfortunately this is the non-ideal reality sometimes.

June 7, 2016 3

Who should run the sprint (review) demo?

The demo is an important part of the Sprint Review ceremony. However, there is a lot of contention who should run the demo, and how much preparation should go into it. Here are a few ideas to help make your demos more effective without decreasing efficiency.

May 20, 2016 5

Have you been Bean Boozled? The argument for co-location and shared spaces

I was recently talking to a former co-worker on one of my previous Scrum teams about team rooms. A fundamental of team formation and performance is teams being together and bonding through work and fun. While many companies proclaim they’re practicing Agile/Scrum, co-location and team rooms seem to have become more optional than mandatory. While we cannot completely get away from distributed teams, it seems that often even with teams that have members in the same place those teams are not sharing a space. From this practice I’ve seen teams having a harder time forming, norming, and performing (though they don’t seem to have storming problems). What benefits are teams missing when they don’t have a shared space? And even when they do have one, are they then lacking the ability to work with distributed teams?

June 22, 2015 0

I want updates!



President & Exec Director: Women in Agile

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

©  2023 Natalie Warnert. Built using WordPress and OnePage Express Theme.