How to Teach your Team Scrum in Three Months
We tend to think about agile as a software development approach, but it has applications to the business as it can aid the improvement of
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Our experts talk about what it means to solve complex client problems with 21st century frameworks and practices.
What is Lean Coffee?
Lean Coffee is an structured but agenda less meeting that allows participants to gather, build and talk. It’s a great way to run Retrospectives by crowd-sourcing what the team really want to talk about.
The Lean, Agile PMO
Presentation at the Australian Computer Society 2013, Canberra Australia. In a modern world of agile processes and self-managing teams, what role does the traditional Project
Scrum Coaching in Canberra — Top 5 tips for using Scrum in Government
What does it take to produce results when using Scrum in a highly regulated, hierarchical, and often risk-averse culture like a government organisation? Here’s ZXMs top 5 tips.
The Lion, the Mouse and the Thorn of Usability Testing
Presentation at Agile 2013, Nashville USA. [gigya src=”http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”450″ height=”400″ bgcolor=”#ffffff” flashvars=”prezi_id=4lepbbbgfxxw&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0″]
PRINCE2 processes vs Agile development frameworks
PRINCE2 has been the gold standard for project management certification for over a decade. It’s commonly a prerequisite for project managers and is recognised as being essential for keeping projects “in control”, but does this make project management incompatible with Scrum? How do you put the two together?
Focusing on User Tasks to Deliver a Better Customer Experience
On one of my recent projects, we were asked to deliver a new Information Architecture for a government website that reflected the depth and breath
Beyond the new new product development game
Keynote presentation at Product Camp Sydney, 2013 [gigya src=”http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”450″ height=”400″ bgcolor=”#ffffff” flashvars=”prezi_id=yxy_jtee1jfg&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0″]
Applying a Psychology Based Model to Improve Business Processes
Often, when we find out that we don’t know something that may be important to know, it motivates us to find out more in order
Patterns for breaking down usability and UX re-work
So you’ve just finished usability testing in your Sprint and have a pile of changes for your agile team to implement. How do you break down the UX changes that are needed to make a product useful, usable and accessible, into smaller, bite-sized User Stories?
Usability testing in Scrum environments — Presentation at Scrum Australia 2013
Traditionally, all testing, including assessing how easy real users can use your software, occurs in the very last phase of the project. But what if
Why Training Courses are killing your chance to be Agile
It seems like agile training courses are sprouting up everywhere here in Australia. I seem to even be getting emails from places I don’t even
Lean UX. Is it *really* about start-ups or something more profound?
The UX Pin have produced a great infographic in an attempt to describe the differences between Lean UX and Agile UX. It’s a great look
Demystifying Agile: How much documentation is enough?
How much documentation is enough for an agile project? Scrum doesn’t explicitly state what requirements are necessary to document during a Sprint or even throughout the project.
UX working a Sprint ahead is full of FAIL. Work as a single team instead.
It usually happens this way. Adoption of agile methods begins with developers. This is because, according to the Agile Manifesto, agile work values “working software over
Designing for Mobile vs Desktop – what are the key differences?
Australians are now the largest users of smartphones in the world[1] with reports suggesting that up to 86% own a mobile internet-capable device [2]. However,
Upcoming conferences — Agile Australia, Scrum Australia and Agile (Nashville) 2013
This is looking to be a big year for Zen Ex Machina on the conference front. We’re hoping to return again to the USA to
Usability testing in Agile environments
I had the pleasure of returning to a Team I had been doing Scrum coaching with earlier in the year to do usability testing on
Why Agile doesn’t work and what to do about it
With one of our offices in Canberra — the seat of the Federal Government in Australia — I’ve been hearing that a number of departments
Becoming Agile: Is training enough?
I’ve noticed a lot of people doing some sort of agile training. I’m very heartened by this move. Even designers seem to be starting to
What really is Lean UX?
How effective are your UX deliverables? Many of us produce amazingly beautiful, nuanced and comprehensive UX deliverables: Personas Storyboards Content inventories Concept maps Information maps
Empowering Teams using SCRUM – The Power of NO
I recently presented at the LAST (Lean, Agile, Systems, Thinking) Conference in Melbourne about a project where I was asked to test if it was
Scrum in a Business as Usual (BAU) Team
ZXM had been working on a project with a client using Scrum to help them set up an Intranet redevelopment project. The transparency and collaboration
Dr Jekyll and Mr Scrum — a presentation on transformations to Agile
Many programs, projects and enterprises are starting to consider transforming to agile ways of working. Some start with just stand-ups. Some then call it Scrum.
The Trouble with Time Travel — a presentation about designers working one Sprint ahead of developers on Agile projects
Many UX practitioners own their own TARDIS – it’s the pattern many of us have adopted so designers can work with development teams using Agile methods
Designing effective email marketing campaigns
Businesses spend a lot of time and effort getting Users to their website and asking them to “like ” or subscribe to the site, yet
The Unsubscribed – Designing for Conversion
Many small businesses focus exclusively on creating a web site with amazing graphics, beautiful imagery and classic typography. The visual aesthetic, though, is only one
Corporate culture and adoption of social media
I have quite vivid memories of Sunday mornings as a child, being upset that there were few cartoons on Australian free-to-air television, and too many
What goes on during a Sprint – a Scrum Infographic
What goes on during a Sprint in Scrum? Everything! Where it starts Scrum starts off with a big list of requirements (User Stories in a
A 2×4 Intranet Strategy: Delivering a Corporate Intranet in only 4 months
I was recently asked by a risk adverse organsisation to come up with a strategy for implementing their intranet in less than 6 months. Looming
Elements of Experience Strategy
I’ve been reading through a number of blog posts over the last few weeks that examine the rise of experience architecture, experience strategy and content
Modern Personas in Agile Environments
The popularity of Personas seems to have increased with the introduction of Agile methods like Scrum into many organisations. This seems to be because many
When is Agile not Agile?
I presented yesterday at the annual Australian Computer Society (ACS) conference in Canberra on strategies for implementation of new media. In the breaks, walking around
ACS – 2012 An Agile Approach to Optimising our Digital Strategy
Today, the most popular way people prefer to make contact with organisations is online as customers embrace new digital channels. We needed to modernize our
ACS 2012 – Creating a successful digital strategy
Today, peoples’ use of products, services and government programs are driven by their experiences of Twitter, Google, Amazon and Facebook. Research shows, however, that most
An Agile, Lean approach to Content Migration in Web Projects
We’ve started working on an intranet for a government agency. As with most redesign strategies, the basis for the project is to improve the site.
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Copyright © Zen Ex Machina® and ™ (2021). All rights reserved. ABN 93 153 194 220
Copyright © Zen Ex Machina® and ™ (2021). All rights reserved. ABN 93 153 194 220