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 [...]
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Guest post: Specialized Skills
Whether we’re talking about revolutionary new web services, IT systems to automate internal procedures, or products to sell in boxes, there are many different sorts of things that need to be done. We need to envision the product, decide what’s required to be done, design it, build it, make sure it works, and put it [...]
Guest post: What is an Agile Coach
Recently a friend asked about the definition of the title, “Agile Coach.” Googling “agile coach” informs me that there are about 205,000 pages with that term. Obviously the term is in widespread use. I don’t typically call myself an Agile Coach, though I’ll use that term informally if it’s the term used by those with [...]
Guest post: The IT Manager’s Dilemma with Software Debt
The team continues to complain about working with that legacy codebase because it has so much debt. That software debt slows them down in feature delivery and they are wondering if we can push for priority to be put into paying it back some?” asked the ScrumMaster. The IT Development Manager looked distraught about the [...]
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: Artful Agile
When the global Agile Tour made it’s 2011 stop in Sydney, little did we know that a new Agile game was about to be born. The Sydney leg of the tour was a fantastic couple of days full of wholehearted interaction and efficient, self-organizing groups. The opportunity to create a new Agile game was presented to [...]
Guest post: Scrum is the Vehicle, Not the Destination
Have you ever heard or said any of these phrases? We are going to implement the Scrum methodology. We’re doing a modified Scrum. Our developers are using a Scrum process. These may seem like innocuous statements but they are indicators of potential misinterpretation of how Scrum is best utilized. Scrum is not a full development [...]
Guest post: Avoiding Iteration Zero
Teams new to Agile often realize that they have a lot to do before they get their new development process at full speed. Looking at this big and unknown hill in front of them, many Agile teams choose to do an Iteration Zero (or Sprint Zero) to prepare before they start delivering regular increments of [...]
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 [...]
Guest post: Mastering the sidle.
Have you ever noticed when you have a team conversation, and agreement seems to be reached? Beware! There will be a sidle. Watch for it, be prepared for it. Don’t avoid it. What is the sidle? The sidle is simply, one person who hangs back … the conversation after the conversation; the hallway conversation; the [...]
