agile

Imagine you work in a hardware store. You notice a customer puzzling over the vast array of electric drills.

She turns to you and says, I need a drill, but I don’t know which one to pick.

You ask “So, why do you want a drill?

“To make a hole.” she replies, somewhat exasperated. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“Sure,” you might say, “But why do you want to drill a hole? It might help us decide which drill you need!”

"Oh, okay," and she goes on to describe the need to thread cable from one room, to another.

Update: Video of this talk is now available.

Communication is a skill most of us practice every day.

Often without realising we're doing it.

Rarely intentionally.

A couple of days ago I found myself describing how to estimate the size of a story. It was coming out in my own words, without references. It felt... right.

One agile approach for "sizing" up a task is to use a relative scale to describe a mixture of effort, complexity and uncertainty.

Last week I completed scrum master training... and now need to prepare for the exam to become a certified scrum master. This makes me a scrum padawan at this point. Right?

So... first up, commit to heart the key statements of the Agile Manifesto.