Dec 31, 2018
2018 — My year at Medium
The 13 most valued articles
January 23rd I published my first article at Medium. At the end of the year I received more than 80,000 views and more than 1000 followers. Truly amazing. I am very happy that so many people read my stuff.
I created many articles, but the following 13 have been valued the most:
5 controversial topics that were removed from Scrum
With this article I aimed to clarify that Scrum is evolving. Things that might have put you off could have been removed from Scrum already.
This article got more than 8700 views and more than 1000 claps by more than 245 people. Despite being 5 months old it still gets read by around 200 people per week. It’s number 14 in the Medium all-time list on Scrum related articles.
We hate the Scrum meetings!
I admit this title is a bit of a click-bait. But my intentions are good ;-) I wished to reach out to people that struggle with the Scrum meetings and help them understand what the reason is behind them. The bulk of my articles has been about raising understanding on the topic to allow people to make informed decisions. 7200 people viewed this article and this also continues to be read quite well.
Scrum – Our Sprint Backlog is seen as commitment
Many people have a hard time with Scrum. One of the most painful issues is how the Sprint Backlog, created during the Sprint Planning, is seen as a commitment of the Development Team. And then commitment is perceived as ‘signed with blood’. My article on it received 2700 views.
We don’t deliver a working increment every Sprint
Many people don’t seem to be able to get rid of the waterfall habits. I aimed to inform people that you shouldn’t work like this if doing Scrum.
5500 people viewed this article and 131 of them clapped for it. This is another article that continues to be read by many.
Are you really looking for a Scrum Master? — not according to the job description
I couldn’t stand it how often I saw Scrum Master job descriptions that totally missed the mark. This article shows some terrible examples of the confusion around this role. It received 3100 views.
Modern Agile — An introduction to an awesome concept
One of my first articles at Medium and the 2nd one that got some attention. My intention was to make more people antiquated with Modern Agile. 2300 people read this article. It reached the all-time top 5 of Modern Agile articles here on Medium.
Heart of Agile vs Modern Agile
Another story involving Modern Agile is comparing it with Heart of Agile. These are two concepts that expand on the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. I aimed to show how they compare. This article got 2100 views.
If you look for articles on Modern Agile here at Medium this one is number two on the all-time list.
Scrum wears us down. We don’t get any respite.
This is a topic that I feel very strongly about. Many people get worn down by bad implementations of Scrum. I aimed to show that this should not be the case, that Scrum should not work this way. It got 2200 views.
We don’t need a Scrum Master
It is easy to make the statement: “We don’t need Scrum Masters. Our team is so awesome that we don’t need anyone to hold our hand”. Or “Our aim is to make the Scrum Master irrelevant”. This is my response on the claim which got 2000 views.
Our company impediments wall
I was happily surprised that many people were interested to read how my company increases cohesion and enables faster improvement. It received 2100 views.
The logic of #NoEstimates
There’s a lot of controversy involving #NoEstimates. I aimed to show that it is not that wild and that it follows in the footsteps of Agile and Scrum. It received 1800 views.
Modern Agile and Scrum: is Scrum unfit for purpose?
I was inspired by Modern Agile and I saw how both could work together. However the creator of Modern Agile did see Scrum as something that no was longer a valid option. I responded on this here. It was my first well-received article as it was viewed 1700 times.
User Story Mapping and probabilistic forecasting
In my latest well received article I showed how you can do delivery planning using User Story Mapping and probabilistic forecasting. I did not expect to reach many people with this topic, but close to 2000 people have viewed it.
2018 was an amazing year in which I connected with many people to discuss items related to Heart of Agile, Modern Agile, #NoEstimates, Shuhari, Probabilistic Forecasting and obviously Scrum. I am looking forward to more of this in 2019.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to bang that clap button. You can give up to 50 👏’s. Give it a try if you enjoy this article!
My twitter profile is https://twitter.com/WJAgeling
