Spikes. It’s part of my blog’s name: Spikes and Stories, and it’s a bit of word play, which I’ll explain at the conclusion.  Because of this, it seems only appropriate that I pay homage to spikes and explain how I’ve used them with teams.

They have their origins in Extreme Programming (XP), and I define a spike as:

Work within a sprint that will not deliver any value itself.  Instead, it will create knowledge that may be instrumental in doing or estimating future work.

---

Why call them spikes?

I don’t know.  I’ve seen several conflicting stories on the origin of the term so I’ll not make it worse by picking a side or by making up another origin story.  Nonetheless, I think most of us will agree that it’s not a very intuitive or descriptive name.  Whatever their origin, their usage is a more interesting story.

---

Should teams estimate spikes as they do stories?
Some say they should be estimated, and they say so for a few reasons:

• How do we do velocity-driven planning if we don’t estimate spikes?
• So the team gets credit for the spike in their velocity.
• They shouldn’t be penalized just because they don’t know everything.
• If velocity is a measure of how much work a team can accomplish, credit should be given.

However, I disagree. I say no.  Spikes should not be estimated, and as with so many other things in agile, it comes back to our manifesto which states:

[Read more…]

I think I learned agility differently than most.  I learned it through osmosis. Through my leaders, I learned what agile looked like, what behaviors were ideal, and which were counterproductive.  The first time someone accused me of being “agile,” I was confused since I had no idea that’s what it was called.  Where most can paint a beautiful picture in words of what agile looks like, I was fortunate enough to see it in action and exemplified by some of the world’s most influential leaders.  The only difference?  We called it leading Marines.

I came to this realization after reading Corps Business by David Freedman where he wrote about the 30 management principles of the U.S. Marine Corps.  He created his list after interviewing a number of inspiring Marine Corps leaders, and I was fortunate enough to serve under many of them during my 10 years as an intelligence operative and martial arts instructor.  Freedman brilliantly describes the principles in simple and straight forward language, and I thought I’d share a few of his principles with you today.  Let’s get started.

[Read more…]