If you read about my – Marijke – introduction to scrum, you know there’s probably a voodoo doll somewhere with my face on it. I wish I could tell you that there’s only one of those and I’ve bettered my agile life since then. But like many wishes, one can only cross fingers… Let me tell you about the second time I drove a scrum team (actually in this story: multiple. I Read More …
Chief product owner? I – Saloua – bet you are confused. The whole idea behind agile was less hierarchy and bureaucracy? When I first heard about this role, I thought as well NO WAY! Not for me… I’m not cut out to be a boss. I imagined the chief of an Indian tribe deciding if someone would be either the new tribe member or tonight’s dinner 🙂 . Having said that, only stupid people never change their minds… and although I can Read More …
Nobody wants to feel alone, right? Everybody wants to be part of something larger than themselves. Whether it’s the popular group in high school or the rowing club during their student years (yes, this is autobiographical. One of these goals was achieved. You guess which one 😉 ). At our company the organizational structure has been changed in a revolutionary way. No more traditional teams and value chains but volatile squads that come and go. Read More …
Have you ever changed your Facebook relationship status to “it’s complicated?” Well, I – Saloua – did. And after many years of hard work, counseling and perseverance, it’s still complicated. No folks, not my marriage! Me and the story point.. A story point is an arbitrary measure used by squads that reflects the complexity and “needed effort to finish” a story. A story point is a relative measure. Science says humans are far Read More …
I, Marijke, applied for a job called chapter lead. Pretty intensively I would say. I studied the job description, the required personality traits and expertise, I even reached out to Spotify to hear their experiences with it. Managing without being a traditional manager! An organization without hierarchy and no more bureaucracy! To me, it sounded like heaven! Well I got the job and June 15th was the big day. I was so Read More …
Elephant carpaccio. The first first time I heard this expression, I was laughing out loud. Please don’t start thinking about parmesan and pine nuts as this is a different kind of carpaccio! Have you ever stood at the beginning of a huge project? So huge that you had no clue where to start and how to get to the end? I remember very well my master thesis, it scared the hell Read More …
Wondering why I, Saloua, associate agility with morning sickness? Let me tell you all about it! It was 3 years ago, we were struggling with the vendor for one of our core systems. We were faced with a planning by which it would take one year to upgrade the software. One full year! The plan was that after receiving our signed off -with blood- specification, the vendor would go under Read More …
Don’t they say a picture is better than a thousand words? Well then, here you go. This is the Spotify model in a nutshell, by Henrik Kniberg: Oh and wait, that was only part 1. Ready for part 2? Impressive eh? Inspiring even! That is exactly what we thought. And after playing and working with it for a few months – and by that we mean the whole shabam, IT, Read More …
I guess the first thing I, Saloua, should explain here is what is a COTS. It sounds very alien but a COTS is actually an off the shelf commercial software (think Microsoft WORD). The idea behind agile is that you build your little piece of software and you make it better every single sprint. And if you made it worse by mistake, you can easily fix that in the next Read More …
I, Marijke, remember very well, my first introduction to scrum. Although I didn’t know it was called scrum back then. What I did know however was that it was standing in my way, making me wait and frustrating me. So I came quite a long way, as I am now writing a blog about agile adventures…. Back in 2013, I was product manager Cards. As a product manager, I was Read More …