Do you have a problem starting your meetings on time? Do people just seem to roll into the room well after a meeting begins without any particular concern as to the consequences of arriving late?
I have this same problem when I teach classes. My classes have a…
Bill Wake’s INVEST acronym describes a set of characteristics that are indicative of a good user story. INVEST stands for Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small or Sized Appropriately, and Testable (You can learn more about INVEST in chapter 5 of my
This blog post is the third and final in a series of three postings where I discuss eight of the reasons why stakeholders fail to attend sprint reviews and I offer suggestions for how to handle each cause.
In the first posting I focused on two reasons that I categorized…
This blog post is the second in a series of three postings where I discuss eight of the reasons why stakeholders fail to attend sprint reviews and I offer suggestions for how to handle each cause.
In the first posting I focused on two reasons that I categorized as…
In a former article about the sprint review I pointed out that the sprint review is a meeting primarily for the benefit of the stakeholders. Yet, over the years I have visited with companies whose stakeholders are often absent at the very meetings where they should…
When considering your own organization ask yourself this question: “Are you working on too many projects at the same time?” If you are similar to most organizations that I visit, your answer will be a resounding yes! I’m having a hard time remembering the last time that…
In my experience it has never been a good idea to “surprise” the stakeholders (e.g., customers, users, internal management) of the product we are building. I can’t recall the last time I’ve heard a stakeholder say, “Wow, I am really surprised by what you are showing me…”…
I frequently get asked if sprints should be required to start on Mondays and end on Fridays. No, absolutely not! Is it common for sprints to align with week boundaries? Sure, but I think that many teams do that for conceptual (calendar) convenience.
Sprints are…
At a recent class a student asked me which role I would personally prefer to fill: product owner, ScrumMaster, or development team member. I have held each of these roles in the past, so that question gave me pause to consider how I really felt.
After some consideration…
In a previous blog post I discussed the fallacy of believing that organizations can execute a significant team restructuring at the start of their agile adoption. In this blog post I will broaden the discussion to include the fallacy that an organization transitioning to…