From our personal experience, we are all aware that with a lot of work and outside pressures, working on your personal development, trying to unite and move forward a team of people can be quite tricky, especially as we share our personal challenges. That’s why at ScrumDesk, we decided to gather a number of [...]
Should you use story points for a team of developers developing multiple systems? The situation This question was asked by scrum masters who's teams are not ideal agile teams as the company introduces agile in multiple steps. Their team typically consists of experts focused on web, ledger, back- ends PHP / Java. They are [...]
Understand the reasons, not just the process. Scrum's been around for over two decades and is helping many people successfully develop new products faster and more efficiently. This framework was officially first introduced to the public in 1995 by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, but as the authors say, it's not anything that hasn't [...]
Being agile means receiving feedback, accepting it and changing. To get feedback you probably do retrospective once a sprint, but there are other activities that can provide ideas at any time, motivate and “spice up” your retro all at once. We’re talking about Kudo cards. Kudo cards is a technique described in Management 3.0 [...]
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a frequently used word today in development. For a Product Owner it is one of the foundations of Agile and a successful product. However, are you sure you know what MVP is and how it differs from the minimum marketable product (MMP)? Many people mistake or misuse these terms. Even when [...]
A few years ago, Mike Cohn promoted a user-story format of requirements. Since then, every requirement has become accustomed to being a user story in Scrum. Even then, when it is not considered to be a good one and even if it is not written in this format. User Story The User Story format [...]
Oh, that's a great idea once again. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%. Apparently, the feature is 79% done. Round of applause, that’s a nice number. Nicer than 78%. Masturpercentobation. But what Jeff has to do with that, yes, that user Jeff. Team: ‘Ugh nothing we can do now, we have to wait 3 weeks for the next sprint [...]
Yet another week of mentoring is over; the next team is ready, and another one is prepared. This time, it was, as always, quite unique and exciting. As I always say. We met a new team of people, working in a successful company, and even though they’ve been sitting in the same room for [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
Estimation has been questioned in software development for many years. How can an estimate be made accurately and quickly? And is estimation even necessary? Well, that is the question for thousands of bucks. Because estimation might be expensive. Especially in the age of changes. Time as an estimation unit is wrong! In our agile [...]
Sprint review report Do you want to be prepared for a sprint review session with all information necessary to review your commitments and the status of the outcome? Sprint report is the document that summarizes: Sprint title and goals Sprint start and end dates Information about the team who worked on sprint items Information [...]
Performance improvements We continued with performance improvements targeting the second(s) goal instead of minutes for large backlogs. We are happy to share we were successful, but also that doesn't mean we have ended. As Backlog and Work views are the most used parts of the application, we have chosen them for performance improvements of [...]
Instant synchronization of tasks The board is alive finally. Adding new tasks, changing them, moving, cloning, or deleting them will update the Kanban boards of all team members in seconds. Just change them and everybody sees the same. Cumulative Flow Chart The Cumulative Flow Chart enables Scrum Masters to identify gaps in the process. Teams [...]
AGILE ToolboX is a set of simple tools that agile team can use to support agile planning, daily standups or retrospectives. Agile ToolboX runs in the web browser on any platform. Cards Different card sets for backlog grooming, planning, team estimation or retrospectives. AGILE ToolboX supports multiple scales to estimate business value, effort or risk level. Teams can use Planning [...]
Traditional versus Agile management is fundamentally different in the core principles. This webinar (in Slovak language) summarizes fundamental agile principles: Pull principle, a team pulls requirements and tasks to implement them. As late as possible, details are added as late as possible to do not produce waste working on features that will be removed [...]
The suggestions for this week are as follow: Top Five Tips for Starting Agile Talk: Jeff Lawson on Software Development Adopting Agile When Your Management Style is Mostly Command and Control Getting started with Acceptance-Test Driven Development
Although Agile looks chaotic in practice at first glance, good agile teams take heed to the rules agreed upon in a team. Rules for the daily stand-up Rules for the daily stand-up should cover the following: Where will be the stand-up held? What time does the stand-up start? What is the duration of the [...]
We see a lot of people in Europe eager to know more about Agile. We see people who would like to know what does it mean to be agile, how to start with it and how to evolve into an agile company. ScrumDesk company actively supports agile transition in the Central and Eastern Europe region [...]
You know that probably. Requirements are coming, coming and coming. There is no time to stop and think about them. There is no time to organize them. There is no time to analyze your backlog so you know which requirements should be developed next. Even more, many customers ask you about new functionality or defect fixes. In our [...]
