Stefan Roock

Wie cross-funktional soll mein Team sein?

Agile Teams sollen cross-funktional sein. Punkt. Oder ist es vielleicht doch nicht ganz so einfach? Was genau bedeuted Cross-Funktionalität eigentlich? Und gilt generell die Regel: Je cross-funktionaler, desto besser? Zu diesen Fragen habe ich zusammen mit meinem Bruder Arne Roock einen Artikel verfasst, der in der aktuellen Ausgabe der „Agile Review“ von it-agile erschienen ist. Es…
Buchempfehlung: Tribal Leadership

Nicht mehr ganz taufrisch ist das Buch „Tribal Leadership“ von Dave Logan, John King und Halee Fischer-Wright. Trotzdem ist es immer noch sehr lesenswert für jeden, der sich für Team- und Unternehmensentwicklung interessiert. Das Buch vertritt die These, dass für die Leistungsfähigkeit von Teams und Unternehmen die vorherrschende Kultur wichtig ist. Sie stellen ein 5-stufiges…
Shades of Scrum: Scrum outside IT

Scrum originated outside the IT (development of cars, copiers, printers, photo cameras, computers, see Nonaka’s & Takeuchi’s famous article „The New New Product Development Game“) but most Scrum implementations are in software development. But non-IT strikes back and Scrum starts to spreads into non-IT areas. Some real world examples: Develop service products. Develop and manufacture cars…
Shades of Scrum: The Sprint Planning and the pull principle

The Scrum Sprint Planning incorporates the so-called pull principle. The pull principle origins from the Toyota Production System (at least it is he first occurrence I know of) and aims at creating flow while avoiding overload. A processing unit B pulls new work from an upstream processing unit A when B hast he capacity to…
The Sprint and the ROI

There is a simple, yet powerful idea in Scrum: When every single Sprint has a positive ROI (return on investment) risk management becomes very easy and the need for accurate long term planning diminishes. When every single Sprint has a positive ROI you can just plan from Sprint to Sprint. When a Sprint planning provides…
Shades of Scrum: Estimation of the Product Backlog

The common saying is that in Scrum the development team estimates the Product Backlog in Story Points. This is a good start for a lot of teams since it is a suitable match between business needs and the capability of the team. But: There are a lot of other options for estimation in Scrum. Why…
Shades of Scrum

Is Scrum a process? According to the Oxford dictionary a process is „a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end“. Is Scrum a method? According to the Oxford dictionary a method is „a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one“. Is Scrum…
Shades of Scrum: Waterfall, Pipelining and Sprints

Waterfall and Scrum We all know the traditional approach to software development – the sequential waterfall model. Activities like analysis, design, implementation and test are done sequentially – an activity is completed before the next activity is started. The work is done by specialists like business analysts, software architects etc. And there is Scrum: All activities…
Shades of Scrum: Sprint length

The Sprint length in Scrum is 30 days or less. Most teams work with 2 or 3 week Sprints and the most common recommendation for the Sprint length seems to be 2 weeks. 30 day Sprints seem to be very rare. The general thinking here is that shorter Sprints lead to more frequent inspect&adapt regarding…
Shades of Scrum: 3 Product Owners and a Product Owner Shaped Object

The Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland states about the Product Owner role: The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals. The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing…