Dealing with Technical Stories
One of the first thing they tell us about stories, is that they should be valuable. That’s what the ‘V’ in INVEST stands for: Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic): V – Valuable – A user story must deliver value to the end user. That suggestion usually sits quite well with business side people, which nods in agreement when they […]
Revising Estimation
Many teams feel the need to go over finished stories and update their story points in order to reflect the amount of effort needed to complete them. They general notion is that it’s a good idea to fix the original estimates in order to reflect the “true” velocity of the team. Which later on will […]
If you Want to Scale up – Use Small Stories
Much has been written about the importance of working in short cycles, and the need to cut and slice your stories to small pieces that will fit inside of a single sprint. I’m not going to repeat all this. What I would like to write about is something that might seem counter intuitive at first […]
Stop complaining and start Analyzing
While i expect this to be rare and unfamiliar to most of my readers, in some organizations there are managers that sometimes complain about teams, specifically about their productivity and quality. As an external, i often do not have the knowledge to really form an opinion about this, and as a developer i have my […]
Bugs as a Metric
We have a bug in our industry: We over glorify bugs. We love them so much, that we use them as a primary metric for quality. My take is that that is a bad idea. Bad, as in driving undesired behaviors that are misaligned with our desires to improve quality. Let’s begin with an analogy, […]
10 Tips on how to keep your meeting more fun and effective
We all love them. Those hours of pure fun, creativity and innovation. Meetings. How come that we love them so much? Is it the coffee? Is it the the comfortable chairs and large tables? Is it the fact that we have time to break another world record in candy crush? Now seriously, why is it […]
I am 50% Scrum Master & 50% Team Leader – how to cope with that?
The most frequent question I run into is “Being a scrum master requires so much, how would I have time to also stay part of the team and develop?” or in other words “I am 50% scrum master and 50% team leader – how do I cope with that?” The answer for both questions is […]
Ten ways surgeons and software developers should be alike
When I was a child I had an operation on my shoulder. It was a scheduled operation, nothing urgent. And it left me with an ugly scar on my back. Today, it’s still very notable after all those years. Also still painful during season changes. Roll the clock forward some 40 years, my youngest son […]
R&D metrics that amplify learning
Tony was a Scrum Master. He started measuring the development trends of his team. However, whenever he selected a metric, he got the impression that developers were manipulating the results to meet the targets he set. For example, whenever he measured the closing bugs count, he noticed that from one iteration to another the rate […]
MVP – Not only for startups
Several weeks ago, Josef (pseudonym), a dad from my son’s school contacted me and sent me a link to this article: “A Before-School Exercise Program May Help Children Thrive”.After reading the article, I talked to Josef and agreed with him that I will take it with the principle and carry it forward. The next morning, […]
