Here are the slides from my presentation "Vadå Lean Software Development" (Introduction to Lean Software Development) at HiQ on Oct 13. Note – the picture above (the last slide in my deck) can easily be misinterpreted when used out of context. It is not meant to imply that XP is a subset of Scrum, or
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Henrik Kniberg
Multi-team sprint planning
Here are the slides from my session Multi-team sprint planning. The session took place at the Scrum Forum meeting in Aarhus on Oct 1, in conjunction with the JAOO 2008 conference.
Continue readingWhat’s hard about being an agile developer?
"Simple" is a word often used in agile software development. Terms like YAGNI and "do the simplest thing that can possibly work". It is easy to forget, however, that Simple is often Hard! So what’s hard about becoming an agile software developer, where are the bumps in the ride? In this talk I went through
Continue readingSwedish hospital goes lean
This article on DN (major Swedish newspaper) caught my attention this morning:
The title of the article is "Waiting times at Huddinge halved with new process".
We spend a lot of time helping IT companies understand how to use Lean principles to increase the speed and quality of their product development. It’s interesting to see how the same techniques are applied in totally different domains – in this case the intensive care unit at a hospital.
Continue readingVideo recording of “10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP”
Here is InfoQ’s video recording of my 90 minute session "10 ways to Screw up with Scrum and XP" at Agile 2008 in Toronto. And here are the slides too. Too bad the slide animations and the audience participation doesn’t show up, and that you mostly see the back of my head (the camera was
Continue readingCrisp mystery partially solved
One of the ancient mysteries of science is why toasted bread is less filling to eat than non-toasted bread. A revolutionary scientific breakthrough was made this evening bringing us closer to the Answer,
See below for the full report.
Muzik Masti
At the Agile 2008 conference I was heavily involved in organizing and facilitating the Muzik Masti stage – a fully rigged music stage where people could jam together. It was a wild experiment but worked out really well! People jammed every evening and the final banquet party was a blast :o) Hmmm…. do I need
Continue readingBootstrapping Scrum and XP in a crisis – Toronto 2008
Here are the slides from my session "Bootstrapping Scrum and XP in a crisis" at Agile 2008 in Toronto.
Continue readingTechnical Debt – How not to ignore it – Toronto 2008
Here are the slides from my session “Technical Debt – how not to ignore it” at Agile 2008 in Toronto. Translations: Portuguese (thanks Demetrius Nunes)
Continue reading10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP – Toronto 2008
Here are the slides from my session “10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP” at Agile 2008 in Toronto. Glad that so many of you participated :o) Translations: Brazilian Portuguese (thanks Demetrius Nunes)
Continue readingDeep Lean with Mary Poppendieck and Jeff Sutherland
If you’re in Stockholm Sep 25-26 you might be interested in Deep Lean. It’s a 2 day in-depth course on Lean & Agile & Scrum (see the course agenda). The teachers are Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Jeff Sutherland, and myself. Mary and Tom coined the term Lean Software Development and Jeff invented Scrum (the most
Continue readingAgile BBQ
The concept of backlogs and taskboards and self-organizing teams is useful in many domains :o) We had Ron & Chet over for BBQ in conjunction with a TDD training session in Stockholm. A great excuse to try an Agile BBQ! With 30 or so guests this saved me a lot of work as host. Just
Continue readingJapanese version of Scrum and XP from the Trenches
Here’s a Japanese translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches. Thanks Shoichi Goto! A Spanish version of the book is also available. Korean, Portuguese, German, Chinese, French, and Slovak translations are underway. I’m impressed by the agile community! All translations will soon be listed on InfoQ. Feel free to email me (henrik.kniberg
Continue readingChinese version of Scrum and XP from the Trenches
Here’s a Chinese translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches. Thanks Jacky Li! A Spanish and Japanese version of the book is also available. Korean, Portuguese, German, French, and Slovak translations are underway. I’m impressed by the agile community! All translations will soon be listed on InfoQ. Feel free to email me
Continue readingSpanish version of Scrum and XP from the Trenches
Here’s a draft version of the Spanish translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches. Good work Ángel Medinilla! Chinese, Korean, German, and Japanese translations are underway, I’ll let you know when they are done. UPDATE (June 10): Within 1 day of publishing this blog entry I received an offer to translate the
Continue reading10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP
Here are the slides from my session "10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP", from the JavaForum conference in Malmö. I’ve done this session at other conferences, but updated the slides a little bit each time. Interesting that so many people like to hear about how to get it all wrong :o)
Continue readingAgile version control with multiple teams
Here’s a paper describing a strategy for version control with multiple teams in an agile environment. It is hosted on InfoQ. Enjoy! Online version (best for reading read on screen) PDF version (best for printing) Single-page summary in print-friendly format.
Continue readingBest speaker award again :o)
Cool, I won another best speaker award :o) This time at the JFokus conference in Stockholm.
Continue readingScrum checklist
NOTE – this checklist is deprecated. The latest version is here.
Here’s a first draft of a simple checklist for those of you that are doing Scrum (or believe so…).
10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP
Here are the slides from my session "10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP", from the JFokus conference in Stockholm.
Continue readingHow to catch up on test automation
Many companies with existing legacy code bases bump into a huge impediment when they want to get agile: lack of test automation.
This article illustrates how to address this problem by creating a test automation backlog and implementing a few tests each sprint.
Test case | Risk |
Manual test cost (man-hours) |
Automation cost (story points) |
Block account | high | 5 hrs | 0.5 sp |
Validate transfer | high | 3 hrs | 5 sp |
See transaction history | medium | 3 hrs | 1 sp |
Sort query results | medium | 2 hrs | 8 sp |
Deposit cash | high | 1.5 hr | 1 sp |
Security alert | high | 1 hr | 13 sp |
Add new user | low | 0.5 hr | 3 sp |
Change skin | low | 0.5 hr | 20 sp |
Scrum success stories
As I mentioned in Failing with Scrum, Scrum is no silver bullet. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it improves the odds.
Over the past few years I’ve been involved in dozens of Scrum projects, directly or indirectly. Interestingly enough, every single case that I can remember has been successful (maybe I just have selective memory…)! The client has been happy with the process and wants to continue using Scrum in future projects.
Here are some thoughts and conclusions about that.
Continue readingFailing with Scrum
There are plenty of Scrum success stories out there, but not so many failure stories. That gives rise to a healthy scepticism. Where are the failure stories? Obviously there must be failures! Or?
Here’s a "failure" story and some thoughts on what it means to fail with Scrum.
Continue readingScrum for game development
I’ve spent quite a lot of time helping gaming companies get agile over the past few years. This article on Scrum and long term planning for video games has some really nice insights and reflections on this! A good summary of some of the industry-specific issues, and patterns for how to address these issues. Recommended
Continue readingIndex card generator – version 2!
Many people use a spreadsheet to house their Scrum Product Backlog. That works quite fine. However, during sprint planning meetings it is usually much more effective to use physical index cards. See my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches for the reasoning behind this. Here’s a simple tool that generates printable index cards in
Continue readingScrum and XP from the Trenches – now on Amazon
Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now listed on Amazon.com. (as well as on InfoQ). If you liked the book then go submit a review on Amazon :o)
Continue readingBest Speaker award :o)
Cool, I was awarded Best Speaker at the Bits & Chips conference in The Netherlands :o) Never would have expected that, considering there were more than 50 other speakers! I did a brief talk about "Bootstrapping Scrum and XP", with an audience of about 150 people. Decided to open with 15 minutes of "The fastest
Continue readingThe Manager’s Role in Scrum
Here are the slides from my Scrum Gathering presentation “The Managers Role In Scrum“. The pictures will make most sense if you were at the presentation :o) Slides in powerpoint format Slides in PDF format
Continue readingAgile toolkit
An agile coach should never leave home without his Agile Toolkit! Mine is much sloppier. The pretty one above belongs to my co-coach David Barnholdt.
Continue readingScrum – what’s in it for me?
To those of you that were at my presentation at JavaForum today, here are the slides for Scrum – what’s in it for me (in Swedish). Enjoy!
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