This article was originally published here on LinkedIn
The Scrum guide states that it “recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person”. I have read a number of posts and articles recently that seem to have taken a very narrow reading of this statement and imply (or even claim quite strongly) that specialisation within an agile team is a bad thing. Interestingly, it is often certain specific specialisations that these people seem to dismiss. These include business analysis (or service design), UX design, and sometimes technical architect. It’s notable that I’ve never seen anyone describe software development as being a valueless specialisation. Some of these articles I seem to imply that a goal of the agile coach should be to ensure that every member of the agile team acquires all of the necessary skills to deliver the product. In this agile nirvana they would have not just technical skills but also the soft ones such as eliciting requirements and understanding underlying business drivers.
An interesting question came up on Quora the other day. Here’s my answer:
I came across this question on Quora and, while it’s very much Scrum 101, I thought I’d show off my Professional Scrum Master knowledge by answering it in full:
I’ve always been a believer in the idea that professionals in whatever walk of life should have the best tools available and this seemed like a pretty good justification to upgrade from my 3 and a half year old MacBook Air to the latest MacBook Pro. After a lot of agonising I went for the 13 inch touchbar model with extra memory, 500GB SDD and standard processor.
I saw this question on Quora that piqued my interest. In answering the question (Spoiler alert: the answer is Yes) I describe my approach to managing change on software projects.
I found an interesting question today about where to start when embarking on a big project. The questioner asked whether they should start with the small or the big modules. My answer was rather different:
A question appeared on Quora asking for the must read book on agile for businesses. Here’s my answer:
Someone asked how they could become valued on without being a genius programmer. I blame “The Social Network”. Here’s my answer:
This question came up on Quora about why employers look for Project Management qualifications when hiring. Here’s my answer: