Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland

Scrum is an Agile development framework that Jeff Sutherland invented at Easel Corporation in 1993. Jeff worked with Ken Schwaber to formalize Scrum at OOPSLA'95. Together, they extended and enhanced Scrum at many software companies and helped write the Agile Manifesto.

Friday, June 29, 2007

XP Game: Know your team's velocity!



I'm using the XP Game in Certified ScrumMaster classes and many people want to know the orgins of the game and how to obtain materials. The full game can be downloaded from the site below. We use a short version of the XP Game to show how Scrum teams can improve estimation, determine the velocity of their teams, and generate "ba" which is the team spirit seen at Toyota on the Prius project.

XP.BE - The XP Game

Want to learn about...

* the planning game?
* velocity?
* story estimation?
* short releases?
* making predictable plans?
* how to explain these things in your company?

Want to...

* play the planning game? (...but maybe in another role)
* feel the velocity of your team?
* see it work?
* let both business people and developers experience it?
* have fun?

The XP Game is a playful way to familiarize the players with some of the more difficult concepts of the XP Planning Game, like velocity, story estimation, yesterday’s weather and the cycle of life. Anyone can participate. The goal is to make development and business people work together, they both play both roles. It’s especially useful when a company starts adopting XP.

Want to know more?

Then you're ready to go to the detailed description. Or, if you want to, you can go immediately to the download center. Did you already play it? Enter all your feedback in the evaluation form. Read testimonials of people who played it.

The XP Game is developed by Vera Peeters (Tryx) and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe (Nayima).

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Hawaii International Conference on Software Systems 2008: Call for Papers - due 15 June 2007


Get your papers in by 15 June 2007 - don't miss Hawaii in January 2008!

Agile Software Development: Lean, Distributed, and Scalable
(Jeff Sutherland and Hubert Smits)

Agile software development processes have been influenced by best practices in Japanese industry, particularly by lean product development principles implemented at companies like Honda and Toyota, and knowledge management strategies developed by Takeuchi and Nonaka, now at the Hitotsubashi Business School in Japan, and Peter Senge at MIT. This Minitrack will focus on advancing the state of the art or presenting innovative ideas related to agile methods, individual practices and tools. Accepted papers will potentially enrich the body of knowledge and influence the framework of thought in the field by investigating Agile methods in a rigorous fashion.

We are open to research papers on multiple aspects of agile methods, particularly those that bring best practices in knowledge management and lean development to scalable, distributed, and outsourced Scrum, eXtreme Programming (XP), and other agile practices. Topics include:

Research on existing or new methodologies and approaches: informal modeling techniques and practices, adapting/trimming existing methods, and new product/project planning techniques

Research on existing or new techniques or practices: pairing, war-rooms, test-first design, paper-based prototyping, early acceptance test driven development, exploratory testing, refactoring, or others.

Research on special topics or tools: configuration and resource management, testing, project steering, user involvement, design for agility, virtual teams or others.

Research on integrating ideas from other fields, e.g. interaction design, requirements engineering, cognitive science, organizational psychology, usability testing, software security, into agile processes.

Research studies of development teams using ethnographic or social research techniques.

Research on agile software engineering economics.

Quantitative and qualitative studies of agile methods, practices, and tools.

Research on agile compliance and cost benefits within CMMI, ISO 9000, and FDA certified development projects.

Papers are particularly relevant when agile process implementations are shown to produce quantitative and qualitative benefits on distributed, outsourced, large, or standards compliant software development projects which have been previously been viewed (erroneously) as unsuited for agile development.

Jeff Sutherland, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer and Worldwide Scrum Consulting Practice Manager
PatientKeeper Inc.
275 Washington St., 2nd Floor
Newton MA 02458
Tel: (617) 987-0394
Email: jeff.sutherland@computer.org

Hubert Smits
Services Dept
Rally Software Development
3333 Walnut Street
Boulder, CO 80301
Email: Hubert.Smits@rallydev.com