Sprinting

Collaboration on high-performing teams is like a rowing team in perfect sync.

Should teams receive partial credit on nearly finished stories when calculating their sprint …

As Scrum teams have moved to shorter sprints, have they also lost the extra time to experiment …

Succeeding with Scrum is easier when you know when and why to conduct each of the Scrum events …

Planning an exact time to do something within a sprint helps make sure you get the important stuff …

We avoid having unfinished work at the end of a sprint, but it sometimes happens. Here’s what to do.

Agile teams strive to finish work in the same iteration in which its begun. Here’s why that is so …

Scrum teams know they need to be potentially releasable at the end of the sprint. But do they know …

A team’s sprints should be the same length every sprint. Here are four reasons why.

Getting to done at the end of each iteration is an important principle in agile. Here’s why.

A summary of the most popular and engaging blog posts of 2016.

Although you may wish it weren’t the case, some Scrum Masters need to document how a sprint went. …

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a painful sprint planning meeting. You might have been in …

There are, of course, a variety of ways to go about planning a sprint. I’ve written previously …

Conventional wisdom says that a team should do a retrospective every sprint. But if your sprints …

It’s quite common for a team to have a bit of unfinished work at the end of an agile sprint or …

I’ve noticed something disturbing over the past two years. And it’s occurred uniformly with teams …

It’s July—find something to celebrate with your team. Unless your “down under,” you’re probably …

I’ve been asked a few times to comment on how I work, what it is I do to stay highly productive, …

Of course, the answer is the whole team – that collective of ScrumMaster plus product owner plus …

I have a bit of a problem with all the hatred shown to so-called vanity metrics.

Eric Ries first …

Martin Lapointe shares how he and his family used Scrum to manage their recent relocation from …

On the first day of my Certified ScrumMaster course, we go over the agenda for the two days. I …

I think I’d like to buy a big-screen plasma television. And maybe after that, a new amplifier for …

It's May, and we're well into spring now. If you're like me, you haven't yet done your annual …

You may have heard Scrum is one of the leading agile software development processes. With more than …

Just because a shorter schedule is more important most of the time, does not mean it is more …

Participants in my Certified ScrumMaster courses are often surprised when I recommend that …

Vision and Backlog

Scrum is a great framework for building a product with the right features. It …

To see how this applies to an agile project, consider the issue of whether a team should earn …

In last month's newsletter I wrote about the idea that everything happens within a sprint. There is …

I guess I angered a few Scrum purists recently when I said that it's OK for an experienced team to …

I recently helped to facilitate a two-day planning session for an important initiative at Adobe …

Many of the challenges in agile and Scrum stem from the idea of the self-organizing team. Of …

Many of you work in a dedicated in-house team, but some of you contract with companies for Scrum …

Even if you've taken the often stated agile stance of getting rid of periodic performance reviews …

I was recently interviewed for an upcoming agile textbook written by Sondra Ashmore and Kristin …

Just the right amount of urgency can generate greater creativity.

One of the most creative things I've seen teams do is pick a theme song for the sprint.

Is your agile team excluding the Scrum product owner from your sprint retrospectives? Check out …

I've never been a big fan of the Shewhart or Deming cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. Sure, it works fine …

A Scrum trainer recently asked for a couple of good, real examples of large user stories (epics) …

The problem of some individuals rambling on and on and on and on ... during the daily scrum has …

I was looking forward to reading this book. I haven't paid much attention to the PMI-ACP initiative …

The book is a comprehensive overview of Scrum. It goes from the principles of agile through the …

Unfortunately, in many companies, we see an inconsistency between project governance and project management.

Does a team have to work with user stories to do Scrum? Of course not.

You believe that agility is right for your team and for your business. You’ve implemented Scrum or …

You know that before the development team writes their first line of code, they need a funded …

The biggest risk to most projects is building the wrong product. Regardless of how fast your agile …

Maybe you work for a vendor who must bid for work in response to an RFP. Or perhaps your company …

You’ve probably heard some people say, “Agile teams don’t plan.” Nothing could be further from the …

Maybe you’ve heard about agile software development projects but aren’t sure if they allow for the …

When will you be done? Though this question doesn’t go away on agile projects, it does get a little …

I've been wondering lately if Scrum is on the verge of getting a new standard meeting--the Backlog …

I'm trying to create a list of the biggest, most common, or hardest to overcome agile problems that …

Resampling is based on the idea that things we’ll observe in the future will be similar to the …

How do we estimate how many hours it will take to deliver a given product backlog if we have no …

Doing performance testing creates some amount of overhead on the team (the tax). This overhead or …

My usual recommendation is to assign points to bug fixing the agile defects. This really achieves …

When it comes to transitioning to agile a lot of companies wonder whether it is best to start small …

When we get features that are too small (as good user stories are), it is very difficult to put a …

A project management office (PMO) that is engaged in and supportive of transitioning to Scrum can …

Getting close to their customer and using rapid feedback cycles led to Team New Zealand winning the …

As a project management framework, Scrum introduces many changes. One of the biggest is the role of …

Teams with subgroups formed around compatible skills, attitudes and approaches to work are less …

People often ask me whether teams should have the right to vote members off. To help answer that …

With a little experience, most teams are able to see how to overlap some types of work and create …

The biggest flaw in overlapping iterations is that there is never a time (except the end of the …

The concepts of agility and project governance are not fundamentally opposed. Each is an attempt to …

The first priority of a team with technical debt is to stop the bleeding, stop things from getting worse.

A DEEP product backlog is detailed appropriately, estimated, emergent and prioritized.

Moving away from component teams is a difficult but necessary step for those who want to adopt an …

The difference on a Scrum project is not that intentional design is thrown out, but that it is done …

Setting and managing expectations is perhaps even more important at the start of a major shift such …

The ideal pilot project sits at the confluence of project size, project duration, project …

An agile team does release planning to avoid the same type of problems we avoid with a topographic …

Each person on the team should ideally be able to see each other person on the team.

Discover whether agile teams should work on one product backlog item at a time or if it's OK for …

Most teams do the daily scrum per person, but some encounter the problem described here and discuss …

Not everyone involved in an agile transition wants the change to be successful. This …

This article addresses the issue of how much detail should be included in product backlog items and …

What my friend had found is that his product owners had evolved in adaptation to their environment, …

One measure we may want to include in our suite of metrics could be the responsiveness of the …

The release sprint is not a dumping ground for sloppy work.

The selection of a new Scrum team’s ScrumMaster can impact the success or failure of the team's …

User stories are a great way to get people talking about requirements. However, there's a reason …

Many teams try to divide and conquer when it comes to sprint planning, often with disjointed and …

If the only certain things in life are death and taxes, why do so many teams think that if they …

An academic paper that describes the importance of using more than just the vaguely defined …

Scrum was designed to be lightweight, so if your team is complaining that it's too heavy, you need …

With no land in sight to guide them, it would have been all too easy for early sailors to get lost …

Too much work goes into use cases to not employ them to their full potential. By assigning points …

Multitasking makes us feel more productive, but in truth trying to take on more than two tasks …

We all crave regularity. We want a steady rhythm and a strong downbeat so we know the steps we need …

This article was written for the Scrum Alliance soapbox. It presents an initial collection of Scrum …

The transition from a plan-driven to an agile process affects not only the development team …

Ken Schwaber and I co-wrote this article to help counter the misperception that agile projects do …

This article describes how a project was successfully downsized from 100 to 12 developers. To make …