Scrum Alliance publishes: Scrum Lessons Learned

I am proud to announce that the Scrum Alliance editorial team has reviewed, approved and published another one of my articles. This one is titled Scrum Lessons Learned. This is the first of many lessons learned articles to come.

What’s it about ?

If you're using Waterfall or some other non-Agile method, then transitioning to Agile principles and the Scrum process is a significant paradigm shift. It's likely that without professional Agile transformation guidance, you will encounter one or more common Agile implementation mistakes.

This article discusses some lessons learned through pain and triumph and tries to boil them down to a few do's and don'ts with some real-world scenarios.

The article will focus on the following do's and don'ts:

• Don't take shortcuts with Scrum. Don't mess with what works.
• Do support your Superheroes. ScrumMasters and Scrum product owners (POs) are your leaders; they must apply themselves as superheroes.
• Don't micromanage. To reach maximum productivity, the Scrum team must be a self-managing entity.

Who is the Scrum Alliance ?

The ScrumAlliance.org is the non-profit organization that manages the official Scrum certifications, training, events, community and more.

View this article on the Scrum Alliance site at:
https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/october/scrum-lessons-learned

View my Scrum Alliance profile at:
https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/profile/kadams8

More Articles

My other articles published by the Scrum Alliance:
Adopt Scrum for Competitive Advantage

Scrum Alliance publishes: Adopt Scrum for Competitive Advantage

Project Success Rates: Agile vs Waterfall

I am proud to announce that the Scrum Alliance editorial team has reviewed, approved and published my article titled Adopt Scrum for Competitive Advantage.

What’s it about ?

Everything is moving faster, so agility is needed now more than ever. In this article, I’ll dive into the reasons for implementing Scrum. For example:

• Why Scrum is required these days
• Studies that demonstrate Scrum project success rates over a decade
• Why Scrum is a significant competitive advantage

Who is the Scrum Alliance ?

The ScrumAlliance.org is the non-profit organization that manages the official Scrum certifications, training, events, community and more.

View this article on the Scrum Alliance site at:
https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/october/adopt-scrum-for-competitive-advantage

View my Scrum Alliance profile at:
https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/profile/kadams8

Jumping over hurdles to upgrade Domino

Here’s what I had to do to the other day to apply Interim Fix 2 to a Domino server running version 9.0.1 Fixpack 4: Shut down Domino, the Domino Controller, the Java Console, NSD, and (wait for it, wait for it) Windows Management Instrumentation. Huh? Apparently WMI or one of its dependent apps grabs onto one or more Domino DLLs and won’t let go. Or some damn thing. One of the dependent apps was VMware Helper. I wonder if that was the culprit.  I remember running into a similar problem years ago upgrading Domino on a Xen VM. That might explain why one only sees problems like this occasionally (when least welcome, of course).

Anyway, until I stopped the WMI service, I kept getting this error when I tried to apply IF2:  “Notes/Domino related process is still running”. Thanks to Rainer Brandl for that tip.

This morning, I tried the same thing on another Domino server and it didn’t work. Same error message. More research. Thanks to Daniel Nashed for the following workaround:

Set Domino and NSD to Manual in Windows Services, rename the Domino directory, restart Windows, rename the Domino directory back to original, apply the patch, reset the services to automatic, restart NSD and Domino. 

Daniel didn’t actually say anything about resetting the Windows services. That was my own “belt-and-suspenders” add-on. Don’t know if it was really necessary. But I got past the error message. Finally. 

But IF2 still wouldn’t install because blah blah blah. Look at the UPGRADE.LOG. Wrong version of something in the Domino directory. I suspected I may have failed to notice if IF1 was installed on this server. So I ran the IF1 installer, which offered to uninstall IF1, and then did so. Then I succeeded, finally, in installing IF2. 

Had that not worked, I might have tried these other things: 

• Run the Fixpack 4 installer. See what it says. Depending on what it says, maybe uninstall/reinstall it, then try to install IF2 again.
• Run the 9.0.1 installer in Repair mode. Then reinstall FP4 and IF2.
• Uninstall 9.0.1, strip everything from the Program directory, reinstall all.

Luckily I didn’t have to get that radical. 

I love working on Sunday mornings.