Book review – Maja Ferle

The Great ScrumMaster

18 June, 20199 October, 2019 by Maja FerleNo Comments

In her book The Great ScrumMaster, author Zuzana Šochová reminds us that we may have lost our way in understanding the role of the ScrumMaster in agile. She describes the role using the #ScrumMasterWay concept which, according to the author, finally provides ScrumMasters the answer to their most common question: “What will the ScrumMaster do once the team is self-organized?” She starts by stating that the ScrumMaster is one of the most undervalued roles in Scrum and agile. Particularly new agile teams don’t understand the value that a ScrumMaster brings to the high performing team. In my opinion, this belief that the ScrumMaster is just a secretary to the team actually comes from some of the training materials that I remember from when I was preparing for my ScrumMaster certification. I remember learning that the ScrumMaster role is not a full-time role and that a ScrumMaster may either be shared across more than one Scrum team or that the ScrumMaster may...

Understanding Bitcoin and blockchain

13 August, 201813 October, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Bitcoin and blockchain may be somewhat off-topic for this blog, but summertime is always a good time for me to pick up off-topic books to read during my vacation. With the current cryptocurrency craze it was unavoidable that I should pick up a book on the topic. Although I was previously vaguely familiar with Bitcoin and blockchain, I wanted to learn more about what exactly the hype is all about. I picked up the book Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies by Andreas M. Antonopoulos which came highly recommended on Goodreads. I'm satisfied that I picked the right book because after having read it I can confirm that the book really does explain Bitcoin and blockchain in a way that is both highly detailed and easy to understand. Throughout the book there are real world examples on how the use of Bitcoin is applied, from simple examples such as buying a coffee to more complex examples using smart contracts. Even math-heavy topics such...

Analytics in the Lean Startup movement and beyond

30 December, 20174 January, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

The book Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz builds on the Lean Startup movement. The authors say that we live in a digital world, and we can build something on the cheap, measure its effect, and learn from it to build something better next time. Lean Analytics is used to measure the progress, helping you to ask the most important questions and get clear answers quickly. In the book, the authors show you how to figure out your business model and your stage of growth. They further explain how to find the One Metric That Matters to you right now, and how to draw a line in the sand so you know where you stand. Analytics is about tracking the metrics that are critical to your business, such as where your revenue comes from, how much you are spending, how many customers you have, and so on. In a startup, you don’t always know which metrics are key, because you...

PMI should not be a synonym for waterfall

30 September, 20172 October, 2017 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Whenever I hear that someone refers to PMP or PMI as a methodology, I want to tell them that neither of these is a project management methodology (PMP is a certification and PMI is the name of the organization that issues the certification). The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is also not a methodology but a standard. In addition to misusing these abbreviations it is even more disturbing that they are used as synonyms for waterfall project management. True, PMBOK was historically all about waterfall project management. But PMI has been adding agile to the PMBOK for many years now and the most recent 6th edition is more agile than ever. To explain how waterfall and agile can be combined, PMBOK now has an appendix about the continuum of project life cycles. PMBOK has always stated that it is the nature of projects to evolve as more detailed and specific information becomes available and that the project life cycle needs...

Learning MapReduce

30 August, 20175 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Chances are that when you started learning MapReduce, the first example that was covered was counting how many times a word appears in a given text or set of texts. This example is sometimes referred to as the “Hello, world!” of MapReduce. The example is straightforward enough and it explains how MapReduce works nicely. But once you’ve got “Hello, world!” out of the way, what next? How do you become comfortable applying the principles of MapReduce in real world situations? For me, the book MapReduce Design Patterns by Donald Miner and Adam Shook was the next step. The authors of the book state that “…motivation for us to write this book was to fill a missing gap we saw in a lot of new MapReduce developers. They had learned how to use the system, got comfortable with writing MapReduce, but were lacking the experience to understand how to do things right or well.” They further explain that the intent of this book...

Being Agile in a Waterfall World

22 April, 20173 July, 2017 by Maja FerleNo Comments

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 rate than you had with Waterfall alone.” Surveys suggest that “pure agile projects are more successful than those that use a combination of agile and waterfall.” On the other hand, organizations often start doing agile projects by introducing agile approaches into their traditional waterfall methodologies. The term water-scrum-fall is one example of a methodology that combines waterfall with agile and although this approach is not ideal, it is useful in organizations that are transitioning to agile and want to maintain some waterfall while attempting to go agile. The book Being Agile in a Waterfall World by Joseph Flahiff unveils a completely different perspective on the agile vs. waterfall debate....

Agile delivery of data models

13 January, 201713 April, 2017 by Maja FerleNo Comments

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 the data model for the database in an agile manner? The book The Nimble Elephant: Agile Delivery of Data Models using a Pattern-based Approach by John Giles addresses this question and gives in-depth advice on how to make it work. Choose a data model pattern How do we come up with a data model quickly in order to allow iterative development to start? The author of the book John Giles suggests to use industry-standard data models or data model patterns as a starting point and customize them as you go. He says that off-the-shelf proven data model patterns may go a long way towards bridging the speed versus quality...

Evolving from project manager to Scrum Master

26 January, 20167 April, 2017 by Maja FerleNo Comments

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 done. The book Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition by Lyssa Adkins is an invaluable resource in helping us to get there. The author's extensive experience and her own journey to becoming a renowned agile coach is valuable input for the reader who is thinking about their own transition. The most important take-aways from this book are that the agile coach listens, observes, doesn't solve the team's problems and for the most part doesn't even speak. When required, the coach guides the team back on track by asking powerful questions that help team members to find new directions...

Yes, you can do data science in Excel

22 September, 20147 July, 2017 by Maja FerleNo Comments

The book Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight by John W. Foreman is one of those fantastic books that upon reading it I kept on asking myself why I haven't come across it sooner. The author makes everything about data science appear less mysterious and so much clearer. On the one hand, the book introduces real life case studies of data science problems that can be solved using algorithms such as k-means clustering, regression, network clustering, optimization methods, ensemble models, prediction and the like. On the other hand, each of these case studies is implemented in Excel. Yes, that's correct, data science can be done in Excel if we really want. It's the perfect tool to use for case studies because everyone knows Excel and thus the algorithms can be explained without the added complexity of having to learn a data mining technology, such as R for example. We probably wouldn't use an Excel spreadsheet to process huge volumes...

Software Extension to the PMBOK guide

29 May, 20147 July, 2017 by Maja FerleNo Comments

PMI continues with its annual publishing of extensions to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). This year they finally published the long awaited Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition. The extension includes widely accepted practices in managing software projects. The structure of the software extension is the same as the structure of the PMBOK guide. Each chapter includes extensions which are applicable to software projects. Some chapters have no extensions or very few of them, for example change management, which in software projects doesn’t differ from the widely accepted change management as described in the PMBOK. We find more extensions in the areas of risk management, communicating with stakeholders and monitoring and controlling. We know that software development presents numerous risks and that these types of projects are often not successful. We should be spending much more time and focus on risk management and relevant communication when managing IT projects. PMI does not take sides for either traditional or agile project...