There are various opinions on mixing agile and waterfall. On one hand, there are strong arguments against mixing agile and waterfall, for example the term scrummerfall was coined to denote a combination of the two approaches and defined as “the practice of combining Scrum and Waterfall so as to ensure failure at a much faster…
As a private citizen, I am ever more annoyed with the rising amount of advertising that hits me everywhere: on the Internet, in magazines and newspapers, on billboards, in public transportation, even in public toilets. It is especially annoying when I am bombarded with ads for stuff that I don’t want because the advertisers missed…
Recently, I was approached by a colleague who is preparing to take the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) to share my experience. It has been almost 5 years since I passed the exam and I would probably have forgotten many of the details, were it not for this article that I wrote for the…
Agile methodologies typically focus on software development. It may appear as if writing code is the only aspect of agile delivery. But we know that most applications use data and this data must be stored somewhere, preferably in a database. This is an integral part of any application. The question then becomes: how do we develop…
While my memory is still fresh after attending the Scrum Gathering in Munich 2016, the first thing that comes to mind is that it’s all about coaching. My impression was that the main purpose of the conference was to come together so that independent consultants who offer coaching services can have access to a huge pool…
Project contingency planning is among the least understood topics related to project management. This is probably due to the fact that contingency deals with the unknown. How do we plan for something that might happen but we don’t even know what that might be? And how much will it cost us if it does happen?…
The findings of PMI’s 8th annual Global Project Management Survey as published in The High cost of Low Performance are disturbing. They report declines in many of the project success factors that they track. Furthermore, the percentage of projects meeting their goals is lower than it has been over the past four years. According to…
Agile software development is most often associated with small companies and small development teams. The very fact that agile teams should have no more than about a dozen members sets limitations that lead us to question the possibility of doing large enterprise data warehousing projects in an agile manner. Despite the limitations, agile can nevertheless…
For those of us who started our careers as traditional project managers, transforming into a Scrum Master role is an arduous journey. To be truly agile, we must surrender being the one who is in command and control. Our new role is to be coach and facilitator, teacher and observer. This is easier said than…
Ever since Ralph Kimball, the guru of dimensional modeling, announced his retirement, it has felt like the end of an era. He was among the first data warehousing/business intelligence pioneers some 20 years ago and although there has been much advancement in the field since then, his dimensional modeling principles are still strongly rooted and…