Archive for June 24th, 2008

• Kick Off

  Date: 2008.06.24 | Category: Scrum, Team | Response: 0

  On the Scrum mailing list, Alan Shalloway came up with a great list for questions you need to answer before starting your Scrum teams. In his experience, this checklist becomes very useful after the organization reaches 75 people.

  • How do I know I’m done planning?
  • What documents do I have?
  • What do I know?
  • How do I know I’m ready for my first Sprint?

  These are the business and architectural requirements for starting the first Sprint.

  • Project/Product Vision Statement, OBT (Why are we here?)
  • Release plan set
  • Product backlog established and visible
  • Initial Estimate w/Top-Line (story points) established and visible
  • Sprint length set
  • Prioritized and estimated Feature list
  • Architectural goals/approach identified and visible
  • Dependencies & Risks Identified and made visible
  • Conceptual design completed

  The Team and their Environment also needs to be prepared before embarking on Scrum.

  • Team established with roles set
  • Trained in Lean-Agile Software development (process and technical practices)
  • Definition of “Done” established and documented (unit, functional, acceptance)
  • Testing approach committed to (Unit, Functional, Acceptance) and visible
  • Information radiator established and visible
  • Tools for testing, coding, integrating, building selected and installed

• Churchill Cup 2008

  Date: 2008.06.24 | Category: Personal, Rugby, Travel | Response: 0

  Last weekend I went to the Churchill Cup in Chicago, IL. It was a very fun rugby tournament and I had a great time. I never went to Chicago before, so it was great fun to visit a new city.  Chicago has great architecture and very good restaurants.

  The winners at the tournament were England, Ireland and Canada. I had hoped the Argentina team would do better, but they wilted in the second half to Ireland. The England\Scotland match was very close up until the end and was some excellent “footie”. Unfortunately, the US Rugby Team lost and sadly have a long way to go to be competitive in international rugby.

  I have provided some pictures from the England\Scotland match.