CollabNet Scrum and Agile Blog

Danube’s ScrumWorks development team, along with other agile tool vendors, was recently challenged by a well-intentioned fellow named Mark Levison to see just how “Agile” we really are.  In other words, do we eat our own dog food. 
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So it’s finally official, the Scrum Alliance has formally added an “exam” requirement to the ScrumMaster Certification process.
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We’re excited to announce the release of ScrumWorks Pro 4, focused on bringing Scrum to large and complex organizations. In the video below, I discuss what we tried to achieve in this milestone and how we went about it.
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At Danube, we’ve long espoused the value of using relative, story point estimates over estimates based on strict chronology. We’ve written papers on why macro metrics are better than granular task based estimates due to the inherent uncertainty latent at the task level. And we eat our own dog food; the ScrumWorks team uses [...]

One of the most common problems I observe in Agile teams is their inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to “swarm” on difficult problems to ensure an adequate solution. When I use the term “swarm,” I’m referring to multiple people working jointly to solve a single problem. Too often teams suffer from fuzzy logic, thinking, “Let’s divide [...]

Is software development a science or engineering discipline in which we can strive for perfection? Are perfectly executed software plans possible in today’s market? I believe that software development, in general, is fraught with uncertainty and is therefore governed, at least in part, by random events. Assuming for an instant that this statement is true, [...]

It’s been a while since my last article and that’s because I’ve been busy as the Product Owner for Danube’s ScrumWorks Pro product. That means I’ve learned a lot and I’d like to share one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about the importance of feedback in release planning.
To provide some context, Danube first released [...]

As the Product Owner of ScrumWorks, I’m often asked why ScrumWorks does not support hierarchical nesting of backlog items (i.e., user stories, PBIs, etc.).  The answer is simple but highlights some profound differences in the way requirements are managed in Scrum and Agile as opposed to other methods.
The short answer is prioritization.  Scrum is predicated [...]

In this article, I try to shed light on the roots of Scrum as based in complexity science. Scrum is a framework designed to harness the benefits of “self-organizing” teams. But what does “self-organization” really mean, where did it come from, and why would it work in the software industry?
First and foremost, I’m not a [...]

Ken Schwaber’s comments in this scrum development thread are fantastic; we need to keep in mind that Scrum is a set of principles, not a call to follow a brainless list of processes.
I like something I heard Ken say during his course: Scrum is simple but very hard to do. Then he proceeded with an [...]