Here’s a great list of agile tools on Mike Cohn’s User Stories site! Primarily for product backlog and user story management. Only problem is that there are way too few reviews so far. Are you using an agile tool? Go submit a review now and spread the link to your friends! Let’s help build this

(sorry, this article is in Swedish, because it is a response to a Swedish article. I won’t make this a habit.)

I en artikel i Computer Sweden den 3 feb står det ”siffror visar att nio av tio Scrumprojekt misslyckas”. Men de angivna siffrorna handlar i själva verket om något helt annat – att 9 av 10 personer som säger att de kör Scrum inte implementerar Scrum fullt ut. Detta säger ingenting om huruvida själva projektet lyckades eller inte (eftersom Scrum inte är ett självandamål). Denna typ av sensationsjournalistik gynnar ingen – utom möjligen tidningen som vill öka sina tittarsiffror, men på bekostnad av trovärdighet.

Låt oss därför titta på lite mer relevanta siffror istället….

A Russian translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now available. Thanks Aleksey Solntsev for initiating this project, and thanks to all of the 17 people who contributed (listed on the first page in the book). French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese translations are also available. Korean, German, Italian, and Slovak

Hur många av er har inte läst om misslyckade projekt, som blivit mycket dyrare än planerat? Jag har svalt detta sätt att resonera, skakat på huvudet, och tänkt "Jaja, vilka kretiner". Men nyss pekade min kollega Mattias Skarin på ett mailinlägg av Roy Morien på en mailinglista med namnet scrumdevelopment (hur hinner han läsa allt?)

1-2 days every week I schedule “slack” days, where I try to catch up on emails, do some admin, prepare for future engagements, and such. During the past year I’ve been using the Pomodoro technique more and more consistently and, the more I use it, the more I find that it really works well! It

Några kollegor på Crisp gav tipset att titta på videon från David Andersons presentation Future Directions for Agile från Agile 2008 Conference. Väldigt väldigt intressant, och emellanåt ganska provocerande, så det kan inte bli speciellt mycket bättre. Real Options Theory var ett intressant nytt område som jag skulle vilja läsa mer om (närbesläktat med Lean),

Anne Thomas Manes förklarade den 5:e januari SOA som dött, och ett flertal personer har inspekterat liket och godkänt dödsprotokollet. Själv är jag inte bland de närmast sörjande, och sörjer inte heller. Good riddance, som det heter. Tvingade mig själv för ett par år sedan att läsa en hel bok i ämnet för att försöka

This is not you, right?

• Customer making changes at a faster rate then the development teams can implement
• A development team running short sprint lengths only to deliver crap to QA
• A development team promising features at a quicker rate than we can make avaliable to end customers – only to build up a queue of unshipped work
• A management team changing directions in a faster pace then company can absorb them,
• A software development company entering an Agile contract with a waterfall process

We apply agile principles to be fast and responsive to changes. Lean teaches us to "deferr decisions", agile to "change late". But doing this and turning a blind eye to real limitations we  fool ourselves to believe we can drive faster than we are able. Result? Quick steering adjustments aimed for a sports car brings the truck into inbalance and possible into the ditch.

running this?	..or this?

I often hear from Scrum teams they don’t understand why estimating in story points are better than estimating in ideal man days. Here comes three reasons …

A French translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now available. Big thanks to Guillaume Mathias, Bruno Orsier, Emmanuel Etasse, and Christophe Bunn. Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese translations are also available. Korean, German, and Slovak translations are underway. I never cease to be impressed by the agile community! All translations

A Portuguese translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now up on the Brazilian InfoQ site. Big thanks to Renato Willi for initiating and coordinating this effort, and thanks to all the other 30 contributors as well who made this happen (listed at the end of the book)! Spanish, Japanese, and

Min gode kollega Hans Brattberg ställde denna provocerande fråga:

Vad i Lean hindrar oss från att göra en kejda av
Req Spec -> Architecture -> Design -> Program -> Test -> Production

Med handovers hela vägen?
Utan kommunikation?
Utan Cross Functional?
Utan Feedback?

Here are the slides from my session "Multi-team sprint planning" from Scrum Gathering 2008 in Stockholm. Here is all the other material from the Scrum Gathering. Interesting stuff!

Here are the slides from my session "Bootstrapping Scrum – Lessons learned helping companies get started" from Scrum Gathering 2008 in Stockholm. I used the same slides at the Scan-Agile conference in Helsinki Oct 29. Here is all the other material from the Scrum Gathering. Interesting stuff!

Yesterday I was at the "Agile i Sverige" conference in Stockholm and did a keynote called "Lita på mig – löften och lögner i agila project". In English that would be "Trust me – promises and lies in agile projects". Here are the slides. The slides are in Swedish (although I ended up doing the

Scrum does not fit well into the fast moving world of support. There is no Sprint committment, there is just continuous work.

But support teams can go Agile. The solutions is spelled Kanban. I have coached two support teams adopting Kanban and attached is a visual representation in how we did it.

"It really helps us visualize our projects and situation"
– Team member

"The first useful thing I can bring with me"
– Team member

How support can go Agile in 5 min

This is not the only way to do it and it is certainly not the end station :). It was just the way that helped our teams to "get going" instead of talking about it.
— mattias.skarin(at)crisp.se

Building something common out of high performing individuals is not always easy. Here are my favourite five Agile team rules:

• Best idea prevales!  "No" – is allowed, if you can come up with something better
• Steady progress beats tripping and falling over
• Bad news first
• In order to lead an army, you have to be able to lead a group. In order to lead a group, you have to be able to lead yourself
• Is it better to be right or to be helpful?

The day I know I have succeeded with Agile? -The day I am out surfing 🙂

As part of development teams and as project managers, I have worked with a number of support departments. They face similar issues:

• "We can’t promise project completion – we are interrupt driven"!
• I want coworkers to take a bigger responsibility, but how?
• How can we too get Agile?

The solution is spelled Kanban Scrum (or just "Kanban"). Currently I am coaching two teams in support/operations to tackle above issues. Being one month into this, I see both teams do great progress. I will get back to tell how we do it. Stay tuned.

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.

"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

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.

Clear roles is important in setting expectations. Not the limit (people can indeed master several roles at the same time) but bringing clearity is a way of saying "being a [product owner] this is what I expect from you".

There is a lot of stuff out there on what Scrum role do but very little about what is expected from Agile Leadership. This is the definitions I use.

Excellent game for quick learning of lean principles. You can do it anywhere and anytime with 20 pennies, some mobile phones and a team of playful people.

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

Here are the slides from my session "Bootstrapping Scrum and XP in a crisis" at Agile 2008 in Toronto.

Here are the slides from my session “Technical Debt – how not to ignore it” at Agile 2008 in Toronto. Translations: Portuguese (thanks Demetrius Nunes)

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)

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

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

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