What is the one focal point that catches every team member’s attention at the same time every day? Of course it is their Scrum board. Some teams go through the motions and use their Scrum board because they are told to; for effective teams the board is a way to collaborate, manage work in process, … Continue reading The Heartbeat of an Agile Team
Sprint Planning
Normalizing Story Points Across Teams
On a large-scale agile project/program with multiple Scrum teams working toward the same overall goal, having user stories sized in a way that makes it easier to re-assign them from one Scrum team to another provides provides a planning and execution advantage when balancing work across teams to optimize delivery dates. Before adopting a common story points scale, there are a couple … Continue reading Normalizing Story Points Across Teams
Sprint Length – Does Size Matter?
When a team that is accustomed to working on 6, 12, or 18-month long projects adopts agile practices, the prospect of planning its work every week or two is daunting. Planning the work every month might be tolerable so the team goes with four week long sprint lengths. As the team becomes more and more … Continue reading Sprint Length – Does Size Matter?
Introducing Scrum to a Team
For a Scrum Master introducing agile to a team, there is a balance between implementing concepts and practices at a pace that does not overwhelm the team and demonstrating the benefits as early as possible to build momentum and support within the organization. Each situation is different, but let’s assume that an organization wants to use Scrum and there … Continue reading Introducing Scrum to a Team
Agile Reflections 