Pomodoro Technique – A scientific method for increased team focus and self-awareness

I recently came across this technique known as ‘Pomodoro Technique and thought of sharing it with you all.

Introduced in 1980’s by Francesco Cirillo, the Pomodoro Technique was created to enhance productivity at work or studies.

Scrum Myth: Sprint backlog needs to be done fully

While working with teams, I observed that sprint backlog is held as a bible towards the progress of the team. If it is not delivered, then it leads to investigation or even the person accountable for the delivery is questioned. Most of the time to my surprise, it isn’t the development team who is questioned rather a Scrum Master or a Delivery Lead. As I see, the scrum guide puts the development team as the actual owner of it.

How to automate the deployment process of static webpage using Jenkins hosted on AWS

For the past few days, I have been trying to link Jenkins to Github and or Bitbucket repos and publish to S3 bucket using AWS

Why don’t you need an agile framework to deliver software?

It all started years ago when, as a programmer, we had to meet the customer to understand his needs. Sometimes, it meant engaging in a conversation about how the current system works or to take down notes on what he needs. Those days you had to do that. Phone lines were not enough. Later, when I officially started working for a company, they were scrumming, and I got introduced to scrum then.

So can Agile and Lean work together?

Organizations globally have adapted Agile in some way or the other. Scrum being widely accepted as a framework to implement the principles of agile. This all started in 90’s with the first agile project being C3 (Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System). When Agile started, it advocated adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement to encourage rapid and flexible responses to change. On the other hand Lean adapted from the Toyota Production Company; the focus is aggressively on the below:

1.           Eliminate waste

2.           Amplify learning

3.           Decide as late as possible

4.           Deliver as fast as possible

5.           Empower the team

6.           Build quality in

7.           See the whole

Let’s try to weave them together:

Why is continuous delivery not just a technical practice?

Continuous Delivery is a practice that emerged from XP(Xtreme Programming) and is definitely not new. It goes back to the early days when Kent Beck and his team were doing it.

The practice of software delivery is far from perfect today.  Implementing Continuous Delivery not only solves technical challenges, but also enhances the development environment. Here are a few reasons why adapting continuous delivery can help businesses seek competitive advantage:

How Agile are you ?

Agile is a path where you learn and improve continuously. With this statement someone asked “If it is a path then how do you know how much to travel and how much to be left to travel”.  This brings in a question in our mind how do we measure the agility of our teams ? Is there a standard matrix or assessment tool ? The answer to this is NO, however you can test your teams against the core values of scrum. You can post some very smart questions against each of these values to identify how effective they are as a team.
Some of the sample effective questions are as follows: