With so many corporate developers and IT teams beating a path to Scrum adoption there seems to be a lot of ScrumMaster training (both certified and otherwise) as well as coaching going on these days. Putting aside any worries about people receiving just enough training to be dangerous (e.g. 2-3 day ScrumMaster training is available from many sources) for moment, most of us think this trend towards Scrum and Agile Development is a very positive one indeed. That said, what concerns me the most is what I perceive to be an oversight of the need for product owner selection, investment and support.

With today's economic pressures coupled with a highly competitive business environment, management is aggressively pursuing ways to increase effectiveness and efficiencies at the same time as they strive to improve customer services. For these reasons many organizations are trying to integrate offshore development into the Agile projects. Offshore development has seen tremendous growth in recent years. The efficiencies gained by combining these two methods could be significant, but there are some pot-holes on the road to success.

Managing an agile project based on uncensored "Very High," "High," and "Low Priority" user stories or backlog items used to induce stress on Jeff Patton. So he learned to implement a combination of prioritization techniques to get these lists--and the job--under control. In this week's column, find out how Jeff utilizes MoSCoW and business goals to make sense of prioritization.

Bob talks with Sanjiv Augustine about his work with Agile Project/Portfolio Management and the Middle Managers that execute projects within organizations.