Posted by James King on July 27, 2011
With certification in agile becoming all the rage, I have decided to create a new international certification for trainers.
To become a Certified Strum Muckster you need to meet the strict sounding entry criteria for the International Strum Alliance and then abide by a number of rules that have been deemed by the International Strum Alliance (currently me) to be the one true and correct way to create and deliver training courses.
Posted in Agile fables, Leading change | Tagged: agile certification | 4 Comments »
Posted by James King on July 18, 2011
I have often admitted that I am not a test manager, but I know enough to realise that any project with an IT component needs to have an IT test strategy.
I also know that creating a test strategy should involve more than just taking the 25 page strategy from the last project and replacing the project name.
Posted in Agile development | Tagged: agile, testing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on July 15, 2011
I published a tongue in cheek article yesterday, but it left me wondering whether I believe in the value of certification.
I guess the answer is yes, but …..
Posted in Agile development, Observations | Tagged: agile certification | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on July 14, 2011
I was speaking to some experienced Agilistas about whether “Agile” had a good or bad reputation at the moment.
We spoke about agile maturity models, agile certification, real agile versus pretend agile and even whether there was a right way to do agile. We did not come to any agreement about whether certification and maturity models were good or bad but we did agree there was no one formula for success in agile.
This seemed logical at first but then I thought there really should be one formula we can apply. That way we can simply measure people on whether they are using it and correct their approach for them.
So after minutes of detailed research and experimentation I came up with the following formula.
Posted in Agile development, Agile fables, Arguing | Tagged: agile, formula for success, maturity model | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on July 13, 2011
Last night I did a presentation for the monthly gathering of agilistas in Sydney, so I thought I should publish my slides here.
There is no sound so they may not make too much sense without any context, but here they are anyway:
http://prezi.com/vllsdawtxfxv/but-where-do-the-stories-come-from/
They are created in a free software package called Prezi.com that allows you to zoom in and out of material so you can present a mindmap rather than a set of slides.
I am sure with practice and creativity you can create far better presentations, but even as a first try I found it really easy to use.
Posted in Events, Observations | Tagged: agile, prezi.com | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on July 7, 2011
I wrote an article on how to motivate people on projects and I still think that the article contains everything a project manager really needs to know in order to motivate people.
But there are some consistent forces at work that enhance or upset your ability to motivate people in each project. So I thought I would list some of the ones I am aware of here:
Posted in Leading change, Techniques | Tagged: motivating project teams | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on July 3, 2011
Force field analysis is a good way to analyse the constraints and the drivers of success when leading change, delivering projects or problem solving in general.
Posted in Idea management, Investigation, Risk | Tagged: Analysis techniqes, problem solving | Leave a Comment »
