| You might be thinking that my title would get a | | | | tool. |
| response from Homer Simpson (Doh!), but too many | | | | 3) It must produce status and progress reports that |
| teams try to do Scrum or Agile in a rigid and | | | | are customizable and accessible to the business. |
| prescriptive way. There are a couple of main reasons | | | | Feedback is the process that keeps Scrum / Agile |
| that I see this. The first is the desire for new teams to | | | | ontrack in a world of changing priorities. Having status |
| "do" Scrum right when they are new to Scrum. I | | | | and progress reports that truly inform the stakeholders |
| resemble that feeling! On my first Scrum project | | | | and project sponsors of where the project is drives |
| (several years ago) I defended the process against | | | | the prioritization process to meet business needs. |
| change rather than being open to process change. Oh | | | | 4) The process must have a business value driven |
| well, we all have to learn somehow! | | | | approach. In other words the project management tool |
| Change for the sake of change is not a good thing. | | | | must drive business value and make business value |
| Any process change should be driven from | | | | delivery clear to the team and stakeholders. If a tool is |
| retrospective discussions and the desire to reduce or | | | | a bottom-up project management tool, the team is |
| eliminate impediments. What is holding your team and | | | | building the trees at such a high rate of speed that the |
| product back? What was the root cause of the | | | | forest of business value is totally obscured. |
| problems you encountered? The team should discuss | | | | How the team uses the tool and how the tool allows |
| these issues and pick one or two top issues and | | | | the team to focus on delivering business value is the |
| agree to work on them and try to find solutions to | | | | main critical issue. A tool must be flexible. |
| them. If that means changing Scrum, then CHANGE | | | | This week Daptiv released Daptiv Scrum that can be |
| SCRUM! | | | | used in conjunction with their popular Daptiv PPM |
| The other major cause I see of process rigidity is on | | | | product. These tools allow companies to manage and |
| teams and projects that are large and complex | | | | track all their work in one centrally visible source. This |
| enough to require an electronic system for tracking | | | | allows the business to see the benefits of an agile |
| work items, making distributed team communication | | | | process. After configuring the system to match the |
| easy to find and use and reporting out status and | | | | process at the organization the team and |
| progress. There are a lot of tools out there and any | | | | management can be comfortable knowing that the |
| tool, used to drive the team and project, can strip agility | | | | team is driving the product rather than the tool. Along |
| from your organization. However nearly all teams have | | | | with the standard Scrum roles of Product Owner and |
| some distributed component and we all know that the | | | | Scrum Master you can create custom roles to meet |
| last simple project was done in 1959! This means that | | | | your need for engineering leadership, release |
| almost all teams and project need a system to help | | | | management, configuration management and other |
| manage the project. | | | | custom role. |
| I'm a white board and sticky type of agilest. Give me a | | | | One of the biggest advantages of Daptiv Scrum is the |
| team room with white boards and a bunch of | | | | ability to easily manage a story driven product backlog. |
| multicolored stickys and I'm a happy camper! Why? | | | | Priority changes are done via drag and drop right in the |
| Because I know that the white board and stickys are | | | | product backlog. |
| NOT the project, the people and the conversations | | | | Daptiv Scrum also gives you the reporting artifacts |
| they have with each other are the project and the | | | | you need to manage the scrum process: Sprint |
| white boards and stickys are used to drive those | | | | Burndown, Release Burndown, Sprint Summary |
| conversations and track the work. | | | | including calculated velocity, Sprint Tracking, and |
| However for most teams and most organizations, my | | | | Features by Product Category. They're all here. |
| agile dream project just does not exist and trying to | | | | However one of the best advantages is the ease of |
| force it to be is foolishness. Most organizations are | | | | setup and maintenance. Built on a web model, Daptiv |
| going to need a tool. | | | | delivers automatic updates via the web which frees |
| What makes a good Scrum / Agile tool? | | | | your team from updates and configuration issues. This |
| 1) It must not have a fixed process flow. The team | | | | ISO 27001 Certified organization provides your team |
| must be able to tweak the process to fit their culture | | | | with the security, redundancy, uptime, maintenance and |
| and organization. | | | | new features so your organization can focus on |
| 2) It must be simple enough to enable not get in the | | | | delivering business value. |
| way. The team must drive the project rather than the | | | | |