Recently I observed financial irrationality. A new project was projected to make a significant impact on financial performance for the organization. The IT group has a standard schedule and SLA for projects that it didn’t want to change, so IT wanted to delay implementation by a month. The project had a projected impact of $50 [...]

In a recent Certified Scrum Product Owner course, we presented the following slide that contrasted Acceptance Criteria to a team’s Definition of Done: I saw one of our students light up.  I knew that her “light bulb” had gone off.   As many others who have seen this slide in the past, I would have expected [...]

We’re seeing an increasing number of clients with distributed Agile development teams. Although this runs somewhat counter to simplistic views of Agile development practices, which focus on co-located teams, it is a much more realistic reflection of actual global development practices. Global, agile teams are here to stay. As a result, we need to extend and adapt existing agile principles and practices, and, at times, create some new ones.

Recently, a discussion emerged from the Beyond Agile community asking where business analysis and allied concerns such as user experience fit in an Agile development project. Should business analysts be sprinkled in the development team? Should a business analyst team be working a sprint or two ahead to feed the development team?