Main category for blog posts…
About the life of the agile team, relations, Scrumastership, responsibilities, and some good practices. “KEEP CALM SCRUM MASTER IS HERE" When I started in one of the company’s development teams, I had no experience with Scrumastership. The team was already formed and was in the “storming” phase. After coming into the team, we reset [...]
Convert backlog item to a feature or epic Sometimes might happen that the user story is bigger than thought originally. In such a case the Product Owner had to create a new epic, enter necessary details and move backlog items to it. For such a situation, we added a new command Convert backlog item [...]
Clone task After few years, the agile squad used to find a structure of subtasks that are repeated for every backlog item. ScrumDesk offers the possibility to define story templates in such case, but sometimes quicker action is necessary. Clone subtask Now it is easy to clone a task by one click on [...]
Root Cause Analysis Editor We are glad to see more and more (and especially experienced) agile teams use the Root Cause Analysis editor to build a shared understanding of the reasons for their impediments. This way agile teams can focus on the true cause of the problem instead of solving some indicators. In this [...]
ScrumImpulz 2018, the oldest Slovak conference about Agile practices The sixth year of the Slovak ScrumImpulz conference will be held on May 31, 2018, in Bratislava. Like every year, we would like to bring quality speakers who do not only talk about Agile an Scrum but live by it in their real [...]
Self-organized teams are fundamental to the success of agile approaches. But what does self-organization means? 5-6 years ago we started to introduce agile to CxO of multiple clients. I remember that the most unbelievable for them was a term self-organized teams. Well, it was unimaginable to see people working without any Mr. Commander. Without [...]
Chooses the right things. Many customers of our consultancy services ask us for some brief and practical description of the role of the Product Owner. Here is our attempt to provide not just some theory, but some additional practical tips for this role as well. The Product Owner The Product Owner role is a [...]
What is an agile epic, what to use it for, and foremost how? Requirements. Small, large, technical, business, operational, and researchable. And above all, plenty of them. During four years of ScrumDesk development, we have more than 800 requirements in our backlog. And these are the only requirements that we have decided to implement [...]
Are you distressed by the huge amount of defects in the product? In this article, you will learn about what practical possibilities you have in agile teams and managing error correction. One of the first questions that pop up whilst introducing agile is how to deal with errors. Too often I hear an immediate answer: [...]
Story A: Joe I’ve known ever since high school. Incredibly nice, funny guy. The one you’d like to have in a team. Scrum was always an interesting topic for Joe and he’d read many books about it and showed a lot of interest. When I asked the team who'd wanted to be a Scrum [...]
In today’s environment, change managers are under increasing pressure to deliver change at speed. They’re having to adapt how IT and Digital projects are being delivered around them. Senior stakeholders are looking to change managers to provide novel approaches to make change happen. Time to change how we do change What do we need [...]
Last year many people asked us about the benefits of Agile compared to traditional ways of creating products. Because of that we had a short brainstorming session and came up with this list of forty advantages of Agile: A customer gets value regularly even during the first weeks of development. Products are usable after [...]
Teamwork is a part of my professional life for the last 20 years. In roles from a team member, team leader, to manager and mentor I had an opportunity to observe different team setups as well as different team dynamics and how it influences the final result. I have always been curious about these [...]
Trainer: Zuzi Šochová Date: 6-7 November 2017 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia NOTE: Please note that this training will be in English. CSPO - Certified Scrum Product Owner Course - is trained by Scrum Alliance certified trainer CST and you will definitely enjoy it. We look at Scrum from the Product Owner's point of view, covering several concepts on how to create [...]
Trainer: Zuzi Šochová Date: 23-24 November, 2017 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Regular Price: 1200 EUR excluding VAT Early Price: 1000 EUR excluding VAT expires 23 October, 2017 NOTE: Please note that this training will be in English. CSM - Certified Scrum Master course is unique opportunity to look at Scrum from the ScrumMaster point of view. You will definitely enjoy it. [...]
In the last week, I attended a couple of sprint review sessions. Some of you maybe call them sprint demo. Ok, simply to say, the meeting at the end of the sprint where you are supposed to show your sprint's achievements. In my case, all sprint review sessions had something in common. People were [...]
Archive epic From this version, you can archive not just release, but epics as well. ScrumDesk is used by customers in multiple ways. Some customers prefer epics as long-term containers of user stories. This is especially useful for product development where epics represent bigger functionality. Some other customers prefer however epics as project phases [...]
Guest accounts for free Do you want to play fair & transparently in front of your clients, stakeholders, or managers? Invite them to your organization account and then assign them to projects as guests. Guests are able: to read everything, to actively comment tasks, be mentioned and notified via ScrumDesk. To invite guest just [...]
How to balance business and technology requirements in a product backlog to build a successful product in long term. Product ownership is hard stuff. Very often you feel schizophrenia. Often you play for a customer, but later, suddenly, you have to protect your team. Sometimes you are pushed by the business, later by architects [...]
When is the best to accept the user story which is finished and who should accept them? In our Agile and Scrum Fundamentals training, people are (surprisingly) surprised when we present our approach of the acceptance of finished work. At the begging we often observe disagreements, but after a few minutes of an explanation why [...]
This article is the continuation of The Daily Stand-up Checklist for ScrumMasters, part III. The aim of this series of articles is to help ScrumMasters to prepare better for daily stand-up so it is efficient, productive and engaging. These tips are based on our observation of 100+ agile teams in their agile transformations. Daily standup and People Sickness? Vacation? ScrumMaster [...]
Sprint planning is one of the most important ceremonies in the Scrum project management method. Why run it and how? Even the Sprint planning ceremony doesn't seem to be complex, many Agile teams consider it a waste of time. "Let's develop something instead of loosing so much time in the sprint planning." This is [...]
How to choose the best estimation unit in an appropriate time. Should it be storypoints or hours? Or even #noestimates at all? In Agile meetups, we often hear very strong opinions about estimation units. From some perspective, it even sounds like a religion. I. Religion: Story points Most people express an opinion that hours [...]
The Agile company can be recognized by the presence of Kanban boards with index cards of user stories which are put into multiple columns based on their status. Such a board looks simple and easy to handle. For agile teams, this is very welcome due to a low level of bureaucracy, high transparency, and [...]
Roadmaps Editor Real start and end These fields are calculated based on the progress of nested backlog items once their subtask were started. New Delta fields They indicate how much late or earlier the feature has been developed comparing to plans specified in a roadmap. Other changes of the roadmap editor Even ScrumMaster can see [...]
This article is the continuation of The Daily Stand-up Checklist for ScrumMasters, part II. The aim of this series of articles is to help Scrum Masters to prepare better for daily stand-up so it is efficient, productive and engaging. These tips are based on our observation of 100+ agile teams in their agile transformations. Agreements To get things working [...]
This article is the continuation of The Daily Stand-up Checklist for ScrumMasters, part I. The aim of this series is to help Scrum Masters to prepare better for daily stand-up so it is efficient, productive and engaging. These tips are based on our observation of 100+ agile teams in their agile transformations. In the first part, [...]
The daily standup meeting is a fundamental ceremony in Scrum. Even if you do not follow Scrum, it has a huge impact due to the transparency it brings. Most of the Agile teams and ScrumMasters think the daily standup ceremony is the easiest part of Scrum. Well, should it brings you the value, you want to do [...]
We see ScrumMasters fail very often while supporting agile teams in their agile transformations. Based on stories of more than one hundred of ScrumMasters we think that the following 10 ScrumMaster's failures are the top most important for agile teams. 1. Because of Agile People do not care about Agile or Scrum. They want [...]
Do you take care of the complex agile project developed with one or more scrum teams? Are your teams dislocated? Or do you manage product portfolio with the help of ScrumDesk? Now you can do scheduling of the project in ScrumDesk not just with releases or sprints. ScrumDesk Roadmaps are an easy way to plan and schedule [...]
