Lets say you are on a team that is both newly formed and new to practicing agile. Your daily standup meetings appear to be going well and you are looking forward to your teams first demo. The big day comes, you get in front of the customer, and...
Using Team Consultants to Optimize Your Organization
Data tells us that the best team sizes are between five and nine people, all of whom are fully dedicated to a project for the duration of the project, and who work together in a cross-functional way to deliver working software at the end of every...
Determining Sprint Length
There is no one-size-fits-all, magic bullet for determining a sprint length that works well for every team. Originally, Scrum called for one-month sprints, but nowadays many teams have been successful with two-week or even one-week sprints.
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Release Planning in Agile (Scrum and XP) Projects
The most frequently asked question on any project might be, “When will you be done?” or “Will you have it all done by a certain date?” We all have experienced times when our projections have been way off and we’ve suffered as a result. Scrum promises a more adaptable planning scenario, one that allows for and indeed expects change. But does that promise mean that we don’t have toor can’tdo release planning any more?
The simple answer is no.
Win a Copy of The Scrum Field Guide
The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year is now shipping (link to Amazon)! Throughout the month of April I will be giving away a signed copy of the book to four readers of this blog.
Winning is easy. Just enter a comment on...
Free Chapters from The Scrum Field Guide
Addison Wesley informed me that theyve made a chapters available from my upcoming book, The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year. It includes the forwards by Jeff Sutherland and Jim Highsmith as well as Chapter 27, Documentation...
When the Team Becomes the Product Owner
Jim was working as the business manager inside the company. He had years of experience and was a few years from retiring. Jim was working on a project with Michelle and he had been voluntold (told he would volunteer) that he was the teams product...
Even 3rd Graders are Project Managers
Looking for ways to use agile practices at home? This blog post was written in 2006 but it still applies today. I've since expanded it to my other kids (we had more).
TechEd Europe 2010 Recordings and Downloads
Just before Thanksgiving I was in Berlin, Germany for TechEd Europe 2010. It was my first time there and two of my three sessions ended in the top 50 (out of 500+).
Scrum: Adding the Fourth Question to the Daily Standup
I have been working on or with Agile teams, mostly Scrum, for almost four years now. On my first team, the Falcon team, and teams ever since, I have noticed a trend in the Daily Scrum meeting where people will say things they think the other team members want to hear. I found this disturbing as you can imagine, and I found a solution to prevent it.