I’ve started work on some new videos and this time it’s all about Agile Estimating, Planning and Contracts. This is the obvious next step having completed Scrum101, and I’m apply some of the lesson that I learnt. I’ve recorded about an hours worth of audio and, at this moment, it feels like I’m about a [...]
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Guest post: Planning Poker – The Power of Two
To plan an Agile project most teams play Planning Poker to estimate the size of user stories. Tools are available like a deck of cards, paper or nowadays even Apple/Android apps. Simplicity is one of our Agile principles and The Power of Two practice allows you to play Planning Poker without any need for these [...]
Guest post: Managing Software Debt
Managing Software Debt Continued Delivery of High Values as Systems Age Many software developers have to deal with legacy code at some point during their careers. Seemingly simple changes are turned into frustrating endeavors. Code that is hard to read and unnecessarily complex. Test scripts and requirements are lacking, and at the same time are [...]
Guest Post: Affinity Estimating – A How-To
At the last Scrum Trainer’s Retreat in Boston, MA, Lowell Lindstrom presented a 30-minute exercise on Affinity Estimating. Kane Mar has written a short blog entry on this technique for sizing a large Product Backlog here. I would like to add some context for the exercise and a step-by-step that I have found useful since [...]
T-Shirt sized estimating cards
I‘ve been a big fan of abstract estimating cards for a long time, and I’ve especially enjoyed using T-shirt sizes. T-shirt sizes are great because the enable communication with Product Owners; they immediately understand that a Large body of work is going be to bigger than a Medium body of work yet smaller than an [...]
An overview of Agile Contracts
Part 1 and Part 2. We’re all familiar with the Agile Manifesto but sometimes it’s unclear how to interpret the principle without some concrete examples. The third item, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, is a good example of this. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. [...]
Scrum and Fixed Price Contracts
Fixed Priced contracts don’t make a great deal of sense in a Scrum world. This is really because traditional software development and Agile software development are two different paradigms … and solutions that work in one paradigm often doesn’t make sense in another. This difference is paradigm is best explained by one of my favorite [...]
Estimate the total cost of Agile projects
Estimating the cost of software is, at best, an educated guess. We try to pretend this is not the case, yet despite all the new ideas and models, software is still costed in the same way it was when I left university 20 years ago. There are so many complexities that it ultimately relies on [...]
Comparing velocity between teams
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Velocity is the amount of work [measured in story points] completed by the team in a single sprint. It’s an interesting metric because it’s both useful and frustrating at the same time. Velocity is useful to teams during the Sprint [...]
What tool do you use to manage your product backlog?
What Scrum or Agile tool do you use to manage your product backlog? I prefer a physical task board and I find that they offer a level of interaction that cannot be matched by electronic tools. I know many people use electronic tools so here’s your opportunity to have your say … what tool do [...]
How to cost Agile projects
How to cost Agile projects is a question that comes up frequently, and a perfect question for a blog post. It’s actually very easy but before I get to the heart of the matter I’d like to spend a few paragraphs setting the context of the question. Costing software projects With many software project approaches [...]
Charlie Sheen, for the win!
I saw this at a client site, and had to laugh. Charlie Sheen, for the win!
Zombie User Stories … User Stories that return from the dead!
Some User Stories that never seem to die. No matter how hard you work on them they get carried over to the next Sprint … Sprint after Sprint after Sprint. Welcome to the nightmare of Zombie User Stories(*)! Zombie (User) Stories are a bad thing for a number of reasons; first, they sap the teams [...]
Distributed release planning at EVE Online
In a recent conversation between Scrum Alliance trainers on the topic of release planning, Clinton Keith gave a wonderful example of large-scale release planning with his client CCP (the creators of the EVE Online – a massive multiplayer online roleplaying space game). Clinton wrote: One example is with a client, CCP, who has 2-3 releases [...]
Guest post: Agile @ Home – Finances!
Introduction: This guest post is from Jonathan Coleman. I first working with Jonathan over a decade ago on the Land Information NZ project. He was a pleasure to work with then, and it’s been great getting to know him again after all this time. Jon recently send this post for review … and I enjoyed [...]
[From the Archives] Affinity Estimating
I‘ve been blogging about Scrum and Agile software development since 2005, and you can find my older work on my personal website. Some of the material has proven to be very popular over the years. So, in an effort to share this the material with a wider audience I’ve decided to start a series featuring [...]
[From the Archives] How much does a Story Point cost?
I‘ve been blogging about Scrum and Agile software development since 2005, and you can find my older work on my personal website. Some of the material has proven to be very popular over the years. So, to share this the material with a wider audience I’ve decided to start a series featuring the best of [...]
[From the Archives] Story Points as Spicy-ness; Using RSP to estimate Story Points
I‘ve been blogging about Scrum and Agile software development since 2005, and you can find my older work on my personal website. Some of the material has proven to be very popular over the years. So, in an effort to share this the material with a wider audience I’ve decided to start a series featuring [...]
[From the Archives] Collaborative decision making and the impact of Scrum
I‘ve been blogging about Scrum and Agile software development since 2005, and you can find my older work on my personal website. Some of the material has proven to be very popular over the years. So, in an effort to share this the material with a wider audience I’ve decided to start a series featuring [...]
[From the Archives] The Ball Point Game
I‘ve been blogging about Scrum and Agile software development since 2005, and you can find my older work on my personal website. Some of the material has proven to be very popular over the years. So, in an effort to share this the material with a wider audience I’ve decided to start a series featuring [...]