Backlog grooming differentiates good scrum teams from ones that are just scraping by. Viewed by some people as optional, there is often a temptation to skip it in favor of remaining focused on the current sprint. Experienced teams understand that backlog grooming can have an impact not just on the next sprint planning meeting but … Continue reading Backlog Grooming: Scrum’s Red Headed Stepchild
Grooming
Getting Started with Story Points
A mature agile team intuitively knows what a story point means in terms of the relative size of a user story compared to other stories that it has sized in the past, but how does a new team that perhaps even has people who are new to agile get started with story points? As I … Continue reading Getting Started with Story Points
Story Points or Ideal Days?
Sizing user stories is a key part of understanding the overall effort required to create a product release. Getting started is simple: pick a baseline story and assign a number of Story Points or Ideal Days that it will take to complete the story. Next, look at other stories in the backlog and decide whether … Continue reading Story Points or Ideal Days?
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 