Introduction to Strengths-Based Teams

Over the last several years, when I work with agile teams, new or old, I have them take the StrengthsFinder assessment. I have found people in the Agile, Scrum, lean and XP camps who feel strongly about different aspects of how the work in our area is done. I feel very strongly about strengths, and would never work with a team without requesting they participate in the assessment and the training and guidance I wrap around that.

I have spoken on this topic from various angles for over three years, have used it with over a dozen teams, overseen over 100 assessments, read three books and parts of three others on the topic. I know it fairly well, believe in it, and want others to hear it.

I'll be sharing more on this topic this month, but for now let me share some introductory links of several videos from different perspectives, reference material and my own previous reference material.

Great video from Marcus Buckingham on strengths, how few of us play to our strengths, and myths that lead us away from our natural strengths.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWZTdso2Njs

Overviews and handouts from talks I've given or submitted, and other posts on strengths-based teams and management.
http://scottdunn.blogspot.com/search/label/strengths

Great interview discussing the business reasons and they share about their own strengths with good practical examples from Tech Ranch in Austin. They provide training for entrepreneurs, and has every person they work with take the profile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wWIUu5fSlA

There are also now formal strengths-based programs at Baylor University and Azusa Pacific University's Noel Strengths Academy for Strengths-Based Leadership and Education. There's also a good overview video here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqKCUmsZKQA


agile, strengths, management,Scrum

My Work Manifesto

I've found that people can play in the same field, doing the same activities, even using the same words, but have vastly different motivations underneath. What motivates us isn't always openly discussed, but it's clearly evident when when I'm in a discussion with a new friend, some colleague my area of work, and I feel a connection on a deeper level. This becomes more of an issue when a business sector is having success and some come into that area simply for that reason. That is, most people I've met in art or landscaping do so because they are passionate about it, not because it will pay for a home in Newport Beach and a new Lexus (while they might appreciate and get those material things, that is not their primary motivation).

Admittedly, I've struggled with how I feel about this with each new agile company I see or coach I meet. I ask myself, "Were they passionate about agile before this recent boom?", but I've also had to ask myself if that matters. Would it be okay, with me, if they weren't passionate about agile and were only in it for the money? What if they were good at coaching, training or in other ways helping companies and people? What if they become passionate about it? Those questions, and more, are ones I can't answer and, I've found, that I cannot decide the worthiness of others being in this field. I can only look at myself in the mirror and refine what's there.

To this end, I put together a list to help me determine my guiding values and, as the Agile Manifesto does, did so in a comparative manner. May it be of some help to you.

Purpose-Motivated over Money-Driven
Extending the Vision over Keeping to the Familiar
Stretching Myself over Staying Comfortable
Helping the Whole over Benefiting a Few
Abundance Mentality over Scarcity Mindset
Others' Needs over Self-Interest
Giving Back over Accumulating
Making a Difference over Busyness
Significance over Success

That is, while it may be fine for others to value the items on the right, I value the items on the left more.

Goals for Agile Teams

When working with companies who are trying to adopt, or correct, an agile approach to their projects or product development, usually using Scrum, the situation, needs and specific problems vary. But the core needs, and root cause of problems, doesn't typically vary that much.

With that in mind, I have a few goals that help me stay focused on the "main and the plain" of agile, and begin with the end in mind (to borrow from Steven Covey).

My Goals for New Agile Teams :

1. That they know, understand and practice the Scrum framework
2. That they are aware of where they aren't, the possible consequences, and the limitations (domain) of Scrum
3. That they know, understand, and are living the agile principles, Scrum values and self-organization
4. That they are aware of other agile methods and the pros and cons
5. That they are connected to community and learning sources
6. That they gel and are moving forward as a team
7. To understand why management wants Scrum/agile here
8. To know their definition of success
9. To understand what they see as their opportunities and challenges

And my personal goals when coaching agile teams:

1. That I set and meet expectations each week
2. That goals are stated and progress visible
3. That goals clearly align with my customer's goals
4. That I understand what it means to meet and exceed expectations
5. That I understand what will help them move forward, and have contributed to that

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, project-management, coaching, eds-pick, business

Kanban Book Review

I just finished reading Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both, by Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin. You can download it for free. I was very impressed by this self-published book, enough so to place an order today on Lulu for a paperback version.

Despite my readings of blogs and listening to podcasts on Kanban, it still wasn't clear to me. Knibert and Skarin broke it down so clearly for me that I finally got it. They took a simple approach, used lots of drawings, as well as comparisons to Scrum that helped related it to something I did know.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

As teams evolved from individuals to self organizing units, the managers realized they were facing a new set of leadership challenges. They needed to deal more with people issues – handling complaints, defining shared goals, resolving conflicts, and negotiating agreements.
...
The WIP limits are there to stop problems from getting out of hand, so if things are flowing smoothly the WIP limits aren’t really used.
...
The only thing that Kanban prescribes is that the work flow should be visual, and that WIP should be limited.
...
What should the Kanban limits be?
When the Kanban limit for “your” column has been reached and you don’t have anything to do, start looking for a bottleneck downstream (i.e. items piling up to the right on the board) and help fix the bottleneck. If there is no bottleneck that is an indication that the Kanban limit might be too low, since the reason for having the limit was to reduce the risk of feeding bottlenecks downstream.
...
If you notice that many items sit still for a long time without being worked on, that is an indication that the Kanban limit might be too high.
•    Too low kanban limit => idle people => bad productivity
•    Too high kanban limit => idle tasks => bad lead time

...value stream map. It’s basically a visualization of the value chain and provides insight into work states, flow and time through the system (cycle time).

Over time, managers learned that if they kept number of concurrent projects low, they didn’t keep stakeholders waiting.
The need to project delivery date was no longer a big issue. These lead managers to stop asking for up front estimates. They only did if they feared they would keep people waiting.

And I particularly loved this approach with management, and of course their results overall:

But keeping traction on complex, infrastructure type issues was a harder ordeal. To deal with that we introduced the ability for teams to assign up to 2 “team impediments” to their managers.
The rules where:
1. Manager can work on two slots at any single point of time.
2.    If both are full, you can add a new one as long as you remove the less important one.
3. Team decides when issue is solved.

Three months after introducing Kanban, the system administration team was awarded “best performing team” in the IT department by the management. At the same time, the system administration team was also voted as one of top three “positive experiences” in the company retrospective. The company retrospective is a company-wide event that happens every 6 weeks, and this was the first time that a team turned up on the top 3 list! And just 3 months earlier these teams had been bottlenecks that most people were complaining about.

For those trying to learn about Kanban, or those responsible for leading, coaching and/or training Scrum in your company or for clients, I highly recommended this book.

Technorati Tags: agile, kanban, lean, scrum

Agile Adoption

Several good posts related to agile adoption -

First, from the Orange County APLN meeting in February:
"One recommendation was to use coaches and train all team members, as noted in a post on Yahoo's Scrum adoption. See Lessons from Yahoo Scrum Adoption for more.

Also, some talked about on large, complex projects, that getting good, thin slices of end-to-end feature/functionality is crtical, and difficult. See Elephant Carpaccio and Walking Skeleton.
...
Others also described, and warned those looking to adopt Scrum, of the problems with ScrumBut.

Also, for environments of continuous changes, such as product support or operations, Kanban might be a good approach.

A question, and spirited debate, occurred around what is pair programming, what is the value and how do you sell it to management?

We also discussed the improvement (60–90% drop in defect density for some teams) from using Test Driven Development (TDD) documented in a Microsoft paper."

The discussion at the APLN meeting got me thinking, along the lines of XP dev practices such as TDD and pair programming, oftwo articles I keep telling others to read are the Decline and Fall of Agile and another on Flaccid Scrum.

For at-a-glance view, check out two versions of why agile adoptions fail, with 12 Agile Adoption Failure Modes and 11 Ways Agile Adoptions Fail.

Other articles or posts you would recommend?

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, project management, scrummaster, project manager

Agile Leadership and Management Presentations

From my two Code Camp presentations on agile, leadership, management and strengths, I've linked the handouts and made a list of the books referenced. Great conversation and shared learning with everyone. Several additional resources that I mentioned are Pragmatic Learning and Thinking, Mavericks at Work and What Got You Here Won't Get You There. I added those books to a list of leadership and management books on Amazon to make it easier to track.

Here are the links to my presentations on Leading a Team and Developing Team Members - management and leadership and Scrum and Agile - People and Problems: Teambuilding with Agile and Strengths.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, management, teams, projects

Salesforce.com's Success with Agile

Perhaps the best slideshow I have seen on agile implementation\agile adoption in the enterprise.

• How do you roll-out Scrum?
• How do teams learn Scrum?
• Are there metrics or proof that agile works?
• How do you get executives to buy-in?
• What about the problems with Scrum or some saying that Scrum is failing?
• What is the role of agile coaches?
• How many product managers should go to product owner training?
• What does successful agile adoption look like?

From the Scrum Gathering conference of 2008 in Chicago, presented by Salesforce.com, titled "A Year of Living Dangerously".

The Year of Living Dangerously: Extraordinary Results for an Enterprise Agile Revolution

View more presentations from Steve Greene.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, management, saas, web2.0

Offshore Agile Teams

Good webcast on offshore development teams using agile (perhaps Scrum). The image below shows the medicine that must be taken - colocated teams. Although it sounds like a tough sell, companies that have done this report not only good results but positive experiences from team members.

The notes in red are mine, pointing out the fact that most offshore teams that I have worked with or know people involved with are operating in a dysfunctional structure.

Technorati Tags: agile, offshore, Scrum, software development

Example of Team Agreements List

Team agreements recently came up at a conference. I picked them up from another coach as a means to help set-up a baseline of expectations that the team can have of each other. They don't take much time to set-up (almost fun) but pay dividends back to the team throughout the project. We start each Scrum Master certification training with a working agreement of what makes a great class.

[2/27/17] I updated the list with some new items that pertain more to technical practices (per XP, DevOps and covered in the Certified Scrum Developer workshop).

Here's an example of a Team Agreements list:

1.    Tell the truth and be transparent
2.    Treat all team members with respect and value other team member’s time.
3.    Value team members’ thoughts
4.    When in the team room, cell phones on low tone and take calls outside of the room. During meetings, cell phones set to silent.
5.    Formal meetings have an agenda, have focused participation and begin/end on time (unless all agree to change it).
6.    Have one conversation at a time including during phone conferences.
7.    ScrumMaster will maintain a calendar in an Excel spreadsheet that will include planned leave and holidays. This will be reviewed and confirmed at start of sprint planning.
8.    Be present during specified co-location days from Monday through Friday, 1:30 pm to 10:30 pm, except for travel. Remote team members can work 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM on Fridays.
9.    Be available by cell phone when needed.
10.    Daily stand-up meeting 2:15 - 2:30 PM
11.    Daily Scrum of Scrums call with US from 9:45 – 10:00 PM (9:15 PST)
12.    Task estimated hours to completion to be updated in Rally/VersionOne/JIRA/TFS daily by 6 PM
13.    Dinner hour is free time
14.    All new code (or code touched) must have unit tests.
15.    At least one story per sprint must have the acceptance tests automated.
16.    One team member must learn something new (take a story they don't know) per sprint.
17.    Limit the number of stories in progress to the number of team members (keeps QA from getting overloaded). Often referred to as a WIP limit.
18.    We must have a team name. And the team name changes if management changes the team.
19.    Developers must check-in their code [every 2 hours, or 4 hours, or daily].
20.    If a developer broke the build, they must undue their change if they can't fix it within 10 minutes.
21.    We must pair on at least one story per sprint. A similar agreement is "We must have at least one mob programming session per sprint."
22.   Leave the code cleaner than you found it (relentless refactoring).
23.   At least [x] items from the retrospective must be worked on the next sprint (typically between 1 - 3).
24.   At Daily Scrum, only the person with the talking stick/ball/rat can talk.
25.   If anyone is late to the Daily Scrum they: put a dollar in the beer/cake/donuts jars, or have to sing and be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (true), tell a joke. Or, one team reversed it - if everyone was on time, the team got cake/pizza/new car. :-)
26.    HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF FUN!
Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, communication, management, teams, projects

Sample Agenda for a Sprint Planning Meeting

Here's a thorough, high-level agenda for a Sprint Planning meeting. Of course, don't use what you don't need...

1. Product Vision and Roadmap [Product Owner]
2. Development status, state of our architecture, results of previous iterations [Team members]
3. Iteration name and theme [ScrumMaster]
4. Velocity in previous iteration(s) [ScrumMaster]
5. Iteration timebox (dates, working days) [ScrumMaster]
6. Team capacity (availability) [Team members]
7. Issues and concerns? [ScrumMaster]
8. Review and update definition of Done [Team members]
9. Stories/items from the backlog to consider [Product Owner]
10. Tasking out [Agile Team]
11. Issues, Dependencies and Assumptions [ScrumMaster]
12 Commit! [Agile Team]Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, sprint, project management, scrummaster, project manager

Iteration vs Release Planning

Saw this simple sprint iteration and releases comparison chart in a Rally training page. I like the line on the difference of focus - release is "what" and iteration is "how." Just keeping that in mind will help guide sprint planning meetings much better. Also, given that the focus of sprint planning is task-estimating, not story-writing, the assumption is that the top of the product backlog (sprint backlog) is well groomed. Taken from Rally's Agile Planning Step-by-Step Guides.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, project management

Should ScrumMasters Code?

One of my mentor's believed that ScrumMasters should be programming as part of their general duties. If you're in IT, it's likely you know some piece of the programming being done, and if not, have the ability to learn some small aspect (SQL, scripting, batch files, etc).

As I finish up my first Rails project several months ago, I learned a number of things. In the end, I switched my laptop over to a dual-boot Windows\Ubuntu machine. I'm been using Ubuntu ever since, and only had to use Windows for old specialty apps (and even those now have web-based versions). I'm emailing, exchanging and editing documents, tracking bugs, organizing and prioritizing work all from Ubuntu. The boot time is faster, installing apps is easier, and viewing all my windows greater in Ubuntu.

I went to Ubuntu in order to get the developer's web site up and running on my machine. Along the way, I've learned about Subversion and Git, production vs. dev mode on Rails, and how configurations are saved and published (or held).

On my current project, I've started using soapUI to help do some testing for the QA team members. By reading a few pages of the documentation, I learned how to automate the tests and use XPath to confirm data items in the responses. Just getting that hands-on to know the versions of our WSDLs, the endpoint changes, seeing data and changes in the payload gave me a deeper and stronger understanding of the work (and challenges) of what the team is trying to accomplish.

I have a renewed belief that the agile project manager is much more effective when their hands are in the code at least some small percent of the time.

If you're a ScrumMaster, are you doing any programming? Would it help? If so, how? If no, why not? If you're not a ScrumMaster, but a team member, how would you feel about your ScrumMaster getting involved in this way? What if it meant asking more questions, learning and perhaps even making some mistakes?

Technorati Tags: scrum, project management, agile, scrummaster, programming

Kanban and Scrum, Black Box and White Box

This post is a good description of Scrum vs. Kanban - Scrum is a black box (and I'd add "a closed black box", isolated from the Enterprise, but that's part of why it works) and Kanban is a white box. It seems part of the success of Scrum is it's simplicity - you can cover the process, roles and artifacts in 10 minutes. But my experience is that it works best out of the box in small, flat, focused, and/or aggressive companies and needs adjustments for other environments (not thrown away, just adjusting). I've seen some throw it away because Scrum didn't work immediately and easily. Scrum is not a panacea, but commitment and tailoring when needed (e.g., combined with Kanban) will still bring success.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, kanban
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Improving Retrospectives

For years I've done the classic retrospective at the end of each sprint, asking the team "What worked? What didn't work?" or "More of? Less of? Start? Stop?" But I tried some new techniques recently, and the response was much better.
Most importantly, I used several ideas listed and described in Agile Retrospectives. To start, I asked the team members to choose one of four categories to represent how they felt about being there. This helped to focus and confirm what they hoped to get out of the meeting. I then clarified our values, updating our team agreement with this key, guiding information. The last thing I did was have each of the team members write down 5 idea for improving our scrum. After collecting their papers, I wrote them down on the wall and had the team come up and cast four votes per team member (we had about 20+ ideas).
Throughout the rest of the week of sprint planning, their clarified values and top ideas/problem solutions were referred to again and again, and really helped to shape and guide how the user stories and acceptance criteria were crafted, as well as how the tasks were broken out.
You can also use the "What worked/didn't work" at the end of any recurring meeting in order to improve it the next time.
I highly recommend Larsen's book. The return on investment for improving your retrospectives is significant.

Looking Outside for Ideas

As much as people want to "think outside the box", it really is very difficult to think of an idea or a viewpoint that you wouldn't naturally think of.

As recent Wall Street Journal article describes how Campbell Soup is looking outside for ideas (MarketingProf's summary here). This same approach that a gold mining company took is described in detail, including the great results, in Mavericks at Work.

If this is a good, successful idea, how are you doing it? Scenarios could include asking a Scrum Coach to review your work (your product backlog, sprint backlogs, user stories), setting aside time regularly to read on the topics you're involved in at work (Scrum, QA, automation, tools, the business sector you are in), and setting up periodic meeting-of-the-minds, whether trusted colleagues, a conference or seminar.

I have not once regretted the time I have set aside for any of these. There are always new ideas that I never would have considered that were immediately application to situations and challenges that I was facing. Yet I still don't make it the priority that reflects the value it is.

How about you - where do your ideas come from? How do make sure you put things in place that help you at what you do?

Story Card Template

As I was setting up another new project in a tool I use, I reviewed the default template used for the story cards. Although I always only use parts of it depending on the project, I think it's good to review all of it each time to consider what the needs of the new project are, rather then be unthinking somewhat and stick with "what works" in a general sense. The template follows:

Story Card Description

The 2-3 sentence version of what the card is about

Business Context

Why is this valuable to the business? What is the goal?

Scope Exclusions

Call out anything that is explicitly not included in the card that could be inferred.

Prerequisites to Card Development

* Other story cards that need to be played first
* Data requirements

Detailed Story Narrative

Step by step description of the happy path scenario. Can be numbered or bulleted. Alternate flows can be captured in the acceptance criteria.

Validations

Include any special business rules or validations here.

Authorization

Include special security requirements here.

UI

Indicate what views are impacted by the card. If possible, include a reference to a low-fi prototype.

Additional Notes for Developer

Include any additional notes that you would like to include here to help the developer understand the context of the card.

Open Issues

Include any questions or open issues that we don’t know the answer to when writing the initial draft of the card. Often phrasing the issue as a question and following it up with the solution clearly labeled as the ‘Answer’ helps with readability.

Sample:

Should there be any restrictions based upon the party being a minor, a fatality or having legal representation?

Answer: No. At this point in time, the business has asked for this as a convenience feature that will always bring them directly to edit mode. Even when these scenarios occur today, the Contact Tab is filled out and the Contact Notes will indicate details about the contact (i.e. spoke with the parents of this party or the next of kin).

Acceptance Criteria

Things that the BA will verify during card signoff. Will be used as the starting point from which QA will expand when creating their test cases.

Scenario 1: Description of Scenario

1. Step 1 to demonstrate the criteria
   
2. Step 2 to demonstrate the criteria
   
3. Step 3 to demonstrate the criteria …
   

Problems with Mingle Project Management

I like Mingle, but it's not perfect. I've posted a few times about the benefits of using Mingle, so now I'll mention the problems.

We had read of performance issues, but I experienced where the cliff is. We have Mingle running on a virtual server with 4 GB of memory. We created a custom project using one tree and approximately 15 fields in the card. As we approached 1200-1500 cards in the project, performance dropped significantly. Users could count to 10 - 30 before items loaded, especially in grid view. As we neared 2000, grid view failed completely. Users new to Mingle started asking for another tool. Stakeholders in planning meetings would lose their patience waiting on it. My advice is find a way to keep bugs and features separate. Delete old, fixed bugs, and be disciplined to keep the features list (product backlog) short. Why keep low priority items when there are months of highs in the list?

Exporting data is a pain. Cut and paste text into Excel gets you by, but you can't use any filters (WHERE clause) nor choose what fields to include or exclude. You get it all. Massaging it into something useful for management can become hours per week if you have large backlogs.

As far as I can tell, you can't enforce data integrity. I tried without success. And garbage in\garbage out feeds the two items above that can become a monster.

The project templates look wonderful (XP, Scrum, Agile Hybrid), but there's only one thin page of documentation on their site for each one on what comprises each template. Trying to figure out how to use them (what the workflow is, the objects, details) is essentially up to you. Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate these views into how Thoughtworks does agile project management, but as I kept poking around, feeling like I was trying to put together the lifestyle of some ancient race based on artifacts, I kept thinking, "The creator of this template could have taken one day to document it and the whole world would be ready to go." As is, the whole world will play Sherlock Holmes and my guess is many will give up and go to what they know and lose out on a great agile mind-share opportunity.

agile, scrum, xp, extreme programming, project management, mingle

Agile Planning Poker Rules

I posted earlier on planning poker, and since it's a popular post, I thought I'd post again on it.

One item that came up in a recent sprint retrospectives (in the "Where do We Need to Improve?" list) was getting better requirements and estimates. So, after the following planning meeting, where the CEO selected his highest priority items, the team met to review those items.

The meeting seemed to be another poor meeting of nothing definite or different being done - lot's of "Well, I'll need to look at that one more," or "Well, management says it needs to be done by next week, so what does it matter how long I think it will take?". I was ready to call the meeting until Martin asked about the planning poker cards (shwag from Phil Scott at the Agile Panel Discussion at the LA Code Camp). He hadn't used them before so we walked through the instructions:

1. Each team member is given a set of cards.
2. One person read the item to be estimated.
3. The team & customer discuss the item.
4. Each team member privately selects a card representing his/her relative estimate.
5. After all have chosen a card, everyone shows the chosen card.
6. If all estimates match, that item's estimate is complete.
7. If estimates are not the same, the group discusses the differences (focusing on the outlying values).
8. Repeat until consensus is reached.

Few notes on modifications we made to the rules -

• We don't have any business members there, but call in the requester if needed.
• We re-estimate until within one card value of each other, or take the median value if there's a majority.

The team really enjoyed, and benefited from the experience. The secrecy of each persons' pick not only made it fun for them, but it got each person so plugged into the task at hand. There was kidding of those who's estimates were way outside the norm. For outrageously low estimates, we rewarded the low-bidder's confidence by giving them that task, but with an agreement that if they met the estimate, we'd buy them lunch. It was particularly enjoyable to see how much this engaged Jeoff, our only team member with the strength Competition. There was great discussion on all the tasks the team had ahead of them, and we left the meeting with a lot more shared knowledge, both where we're weak and where we're strong.

You can buy planning poker card sets from Mike Cohn's Mountain Goat Software site.Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, project managment, software, team building

Agile Leadership Coaching Quotes

I was at a leadership coaching event and had these quotes as good takeaways. Although the training wasn't specific to agile environments, I think they all apply quite well.

• It's a leader's job to make the goals clear, and the team's to make it work. 
  
• In a dynamic environment, it's more important to have strategic positioning than strategic planning. 
  
• The fix for bad leadership isn't teams or teamwork, it's good leadership. 
  
• You don't know what you're capable of. 
  
• There's often a gap between information and application. 
  
• What are your growth hashmarks? Because speed acclimates and it will be hard to tell if you are growing as a leader or not.
  
• The ideal situation is the right job [or role] + the right mindset.
  

Agile Project Management Tools - Mingle, Rally, or...?

I previously posted on comparing different agile project management tools: Mingle, ScrumWorks and an Excel file with dates, hours and a burn down chart. After hearing several agile consultants at Code Camp, I thought I should pass on their (better?) response. 

The question on a tool recommendation came from an audience member who said they had been using Rally, and end the end required one person full time just to manage the tool and data. KenKolcheir, who works for ThoughtWorks, obviously recommended Mingle, with a laugh, but I heartily agree it is a great, easy to use tool. Denise Phillips recommended VersionOne.

But the consensus from all the panelists was to keep it as simple as you can. If you can get by with cards on Post-Its stuck to a wall, do it. Also, this method provides a ready "information radiator" that helps visibility, communication and focus for those nearby or come and go interacting with the team. If you choose to use a the tools from ThoughtWorks, Rally, VersionOne, or Microsoft's Team System 2008, it would be very helpful to have a large monitor or fatscreen on the wall with your cards or a dashboard (with burndown, etc) as the information radiator.

I tried Post-Its, but switched to Mingle so our CEO could access the product and sprint backlogs from his computer and be more directly involved. This is what we needed and has been a key to the success of the organization really getting behind scrum.