Donald E. Gray

Teamwork at agile-RTP

Don — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:11:10 +0000

58 members of agile-RTP and I explored communication in agile teams March 2, 2010. I appreciate the turnout. The rain and temperature were falling. We kept warm and had a great time. Here’s the slide deck I had time for.

Thank you again to Jeff Barschaw, the other agile-RTP organizers, and agile-RTP members!

Effective Agile Retrospectives

Don — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:17:24 +0000

Does your standard iteration retrospective constantly repeat the mantra:

“What did we do well?” “What could we do better?” “What one thing would we like to work on during the next sprint”

Is your team starting to push back on taking the time for their retrospective?

If so …

Increase your team’s effectiveness by facilitating better retrospectives. We will demonstrate [...]

In the news …

Don — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:19:21 +0000

Blog entries are posted. Should be properly linked and tagged. If you find a mistake, please let me know.

I posted some articles while doing the blog. I’ll be adding the rest of the articles next.

What Does an Agile Coach Do?

Don — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:35:45 +0000

Every so often I meet someone who asks, “Don, what do you do?” Over the years I’ve found the best way to answer this question involves asking what that person does, and then share part of my coaching experience that relates to what they do. You see, an agile coach does many things. What I [...]

Agile Principles Shine Light on Development Projects

Don — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:46:44 +0000

I settled into the visitor’s chair across the desk from Nate. Looking at Nate I said “So tell me about your project.”

RULE II: START WHERE THE SYSTEM IS1

Nate smiled and wistfully said: “Well, I’m the project manager and ScrumMaster. John will be the Product Owner. He works in our North East office. He should be [...]

Developing Developer Skills

Don — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:21:34 +0000

Things change quickly in the world of software development. I started my career writing in Fortran 77. I stayed fairly abreast of languages until C++ and Java. I wandered by the Pragmatic Bookshelf to see what’s new. Languages/Frameworks I’ve barely heard of include: Erlang, ANTLR, Stripes, Cocoa, Scala, Groovy and Clojure. I see that [...]

Effective Agile Retrospective Workshop

Don — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:20:37 +0000

In Better Process, Better People I talked about retrospectives as a process for learning and improvement.

My colleague Esther Derby and I will be conducting two one day workshops on Effective Agile Retrospectives. If you want to make the retrospectives you lead more effective, we would enjoy having you participate in the workshop. We’ll be in [...]

Is it done yet?

Don — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:15:59 +0000

One of the great questions in software development revolves around “Is it done yet?” And since the answer is usually “No” the follow on question gets asked, “Well, when will it be done?”

I recently chatted with a ScrumMaster looking for estimating training for his teams. The teams work on a 4 week sprint cycle. [...]

Boomerang Measurements

Don — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:52:58 +0000

You can tell a lot from how a story starts. If you hear “Once upon a time …” you’ll probably hear a fairy tale like “The Three Little Pigs” or “The Little Red Hen”. Around camp fires, kayakers like to tell stories that begin with “No kidding, there I was …” and a tale of [...]

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr – Agilista?

Don — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:22:11 +0000

Hear me out. It may not be as far fetched as it may first seem.

I’m not going to say how long I’ve been around, but I have two copies of The Mythical Man-Month. I have the Anniversary Edition and the 1982 edition of the original 1975 book. I’m not sure why someone on Amazon is [...]