How to Stop Struggling with Sprint Planning What are the danger signs that sprint planning is a struggle for your teams? And how can you turn …
The Sprint Goal: What It Is and How It Can Help Sprint goals are something every Scrum team should try to create. Learn what sprint goals are and …
Why I Don’t Emphasize Sprint Goals Sprint goals are considered a mandatory part of Scrum. Here’s why I disagree.
Why the Fibonacci Sequence Works Well for Estimating If you’ve estimated with Planning Poker, you may very well have used cards with either the …
3 Ways to Help Agile Teams Plan Despite Uncertainty We might not like ambiguity, but it’s a fact of life. Find out how to plan with uncertainty in mind.
How Implementation Intentions Help My Sprints Planning an exact time to do something within a sprint helps make sure you get the important stuff …
The Goal of Sprint Planning Sprint planning may look like it’s about tasks and estimates but those are not the goal.
Should a Team Assign Work During Sprint Planning? Some teams assign all tasks upfront. Others don’t. Here’s what works best.
Managing Sprint Interruptions by Tracking Buffer Use In an ideal world, a Scrum team could perform the work of its sprints entirely uninterrupted. …
Your Team Won’t Think of Everything in Sprint Planning Meetings. And That’s OK. Your team is probably spending too much time in sprint planning meetings. Here’s how to spend less …
An Agile Team Shouldn’t Finish Everything Every Iteration Too often, agile teams are expected to finish everything every iteration. This expectation is …
Large-Scale Scrum “Large-Scale Scrum” by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde is great for anyone looking to scale Scrum up to …
Don’t Estimate the Sprint Backlog Using Task Points Some teams like story points so much, they invent task points and use those for sprint planning. …
Sprint Planning for Agile Teams That Have Lots of Interruptions Most of the Scrum literature describes a situation in which a team is allowed to work without …
Teams Don’t Need to Think of Everything During Sprint Planning A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a painful sprint planning meeting. You might have been in …
Should Scrum Teams Include a Stretch Goal In Their Sprints? There are, of course, a variety of ways to go about planning a sprint. I’ve written previously …
Prioritize and Optimize Over a Slightly Longer Horizon A lot of agile literature stresses that product owners must prioritize the delivery of value. I’m …
How Full to Fill a Sprint An important consideration in capacity-driven planning is how full to fill the sprint. To answer …
The Difference Between a Story and a Task What’s the difference between a user story and a task? Well that’s an easy question, I thought, the …
How I Work, and Use Scrum Personally I’ve been asked a few times to comment on how I work, what it is I do to stay highly productive, …
Why I Prefer Capacity-Driven Sprint Planning The problem with velocity-driven sprint planning is that velocity is simply too variable to be …
Capacity-Driven Sprint Planning There are two primary ways for planning a sprint: velocity-driven sprint planning and …
Velocity-Driven Sprint Planning There are two general approaches to planning sprints: velocity-driven planning and capacity-driven …
Now vs. Not-Now Prioritization Along with Medium-Term Goals In last month’s newsletter I wrote about how we make personal financial decisions in a now vs. …
Introduction to Scrum PPT You may have heard Scrum is one of the leading agile software development processes. With more than …
2 Times to Play Planning Poker and 1 Time Not To I recommend using Planning Poker on product backlog items rather than on the tasks that make up a …
Making the Decision to Abnormally Terminate a Sprint It's always good to have a Plan B. And all Scrum teams do--it's called an abnormal termination. An …
New Year’s Resolutions for ScrumMasters and Product Owners Happy New Year! It's resolution time. A ScrumMaster may want to resolve to praise the team more often.
Assigning Story Points at the Right Time—Or Not at All As much as I value estimating the product backlog, not every team needs to do it. And those who do …
Number, Name, Date-Stamp or Sing Your Sprints One of the most creative things I've seen teams do is pick a theme song for the sprint.
Overheard During a Customer Conversation About Estimates Estimating is a way of buying knowledge. If having the additional knowledge will lead to different …
Agile Teams and Risk Management Ahh, it's fall. Not only does it bring the return of great, cooler weather but it ...
Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process The book is a comprehensive overview of Scrum. It goes from the principles of agile through the …
ADAPTing to Agile for Continued Success You believe that agility is right for your team and for your business. You’ve implemented Scrum or …
Experiencing Agility From Requirements to Planning You know that before the development team writes their first line of code, they need a funded …
Prioritizing Your Product Backlog The biggest risk to most projects is building the wrong product. Regardless of how fast your agile …
Planning for Contract Agile Projects Maybe you work for a vendor who must bid for work in response to an RFP. Or perhaps your company …
Agile Estimating and Planning You’ve probably heard some people say, “Agile teams don’t plan.” Nothing could be further from the …
Agile Estimating Maybe you’ve heard about agile software development projects but aren’t sure if they allow for the …
Advanced Topics in Agile Planning When will you be done? Though this question doesn’t go away on agile projects, it does get a little …
Estimating and Planning Are Necessary for Maximizing Delivered Value Planning is the act of thinking about the future. Sometimes that future holds risk and uncertainty. …
Simulating a Project by Resampling Velocity Resampling is based on the idea that things we’ll observe in the future will be similar to the …
Estimating a Full Backlog Based on a Sample of It How do we estimate how many hours it will take to deliver a given product backlog if we have no …
The Roles of the Project Management Office in Scrum A project management office (PMO) that is engaged in and supportive of transitioning to Scrum can …
Managing Risk on Agile Projects with the Risk Burndown Chart It is possible for risk management and agile project management to coexist on projects that need to …
Synchronize Rather Than Overlap Sprints The biggest flaw in overlapping iterations is that there is never a time (except the end of the …
Prioritizing Tasks Within a Sprint When a team plans a sprint they make a commitment to complete the user stories they select from the …
When Should We Estimate the Product Backlog Sprint planning meetings typically go into deeper detail than is appropriate for product backlog …
The Critical Path on Agile Projects I eventually came to the realization that the team would always be smarter than me.
Writing Contracts for Agile Development User stories are a great way to get people talking about requirements. However, there's a reason …
Sprint Planning Many teams try to divide and conquer when it comes to sprint planning, often with disjointed and …
The Certainty of Uncertainty If the only certain things in life are death and taxes, why do so many teams think that if they …
The Role of Learning and Expected Cost of Change An academic paper that describes the importance of using more than just the vaguely defined …
Distance Remaining Is More Important than Distance Covered With no land in sight to guide them, it would have been all too easy for early sailors to get lost …
Estimating With Use Case Points Too much work goes into use cases to not employ them to their full potential. By assigning points …
A Regular Heartbeat We all crave regularity. We want a steady rhythm and a strong downbeat so we know the steps we need …
Toward a Catalog of Scrum Smells This article was written for the Scrum Alliance soapbox. It presents an initial collection of Scrum …