Blog on Agile principles, practices, and project management tools
Meaningful Agile
Training Lean Change Agent, Bratislava, 11-12 December 2017
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 instead? For Change Agents, Managers and Leaders, adopting a Lean/Agile approach is one of [...]
40 benefits of Agile vs. traditional approaches
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 the first two weeks. Continuous risk reduction from the start of a project. Results are [...]
Drugs and Team Spirit
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 hidden influences behind how things work. Especially behind the teamwork. This led me to [...]
Course Certified Product Owner, November 2017, Bratislava
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 a product and build Product Backlog. We cover not only Scrum but Agile Product [...]
Course Certified Scrum Master, 23-24.10.2017, Bratislava
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. The course gives participants hands-on experience using Scrum in an interactive form – the [...]
Please attend the sprint review. Make your sprint review great.
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 missing. About the sprint review In Scrum, the sprint review is a session that [...]
ScrumDesk 5.27.2: Archive Epic. Bring transparency into the product backlog
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 that need to be closed. Archive command is available in the clicked epic's detail [...]
ScrumDesk 5.27.1: Free Guest Accounts for Stakeholders
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 add them in My Organizations view and then, once they confirm the invitation, project [...]
How to balance business requirements and technical debt?
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 and the development team. There is a knowledge transfer necessary, research requirements, operational, supportive [...]
When to accept User Story
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 we found our way valuable, the mindset of participants is slowly changing. Well, for [...]
The checklist for your daily standup, part IV.: People & Company
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 is a hub of information in an agile team. Without big politics, team members [...]
Prepare for Sprint Planning properly
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 one of the biggest fails of the scrum team. Well, even in case you [...]
Storypoints, hours or #noestimate?
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 are dead. "We have story points in agile so let use them." But once [...]
Kanban or Scrumban?
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 easiness of usage. Win-win-win scenario for the team, business, and project management as well. [...]
ScrumDesk 5.26: Roadmap Editor improvements
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 roadmaps now. No need to wait for the product owner. Milestones have a tooltip displayed [...]