When Should You Estimate the backlog items? Most scrum teams will get backlog estimations during the Sprint Refinement / Grooming meeting. This is ok, actually its a great time to do it. You have all the members of the team together in one room; and it’s a good opportunity to break down backlog stories and […]
Daily Stand Up — Managing Outsiders
Daily Stand Up Outsiders Do you often get outsiders to your daily stand up? I have worked with scrum teams where ‘outsiders’ like to attend and see whats going on. Sometimes they are just silent observers who just like to see whats going on, but do you ever get visitors who start to contribute, butt […]
Scrum Isn’t A Silver Bullet
Scrum Won’t Solve all the Problems I get a lot of emails and messages whenever I publish a post, usually they connect with someone and they ask for more information in fixing problems and implementing them in their company. When I ask for more information, I am often responded to with things around problems with […]
What do you do if your Sprint is derailing?
Did your Sprint Derail? I am sure its happened to the best of us, you spend time refactoring your backlog; prioritising it to ensure everyone is on the same page. You complete your Sprint Planning and are ready for a successful sprint. What happens if you are a few days into your sprint; all of […]
Don’t Rename the Sprint Review
Its called the Sprint Review for a Reason In my previous post about the Sprint Planning Meeting: The Sprint Review: The Product Owners Meeting I went through in depth regarding this Scrum ceremony. The important thing regarding this meeting is that it is a Sprint Review, not just a demo. I have heard many teams rename it […]
Ask Questions, Don’t Solve Problem
This article is more aimed at Scrum Masters, but I think there are key take aways that can be applied to any leadership role. Facilitator first Remember as a scrum master you are a facilitator first. You are not there to solve problems for the team. You might know all the answers, but you can’t […]
Give the Dev Team a Week
Fitting Scrum Sprints into a Year Sprints in Scrum are often two weeks, its a nice period. Working in a business, we all know that executives like to set goals and measure performance per quarter. During roadmap or project planning, you might get asked how many sprints have we completed in a quarter? This obviously […]
Should a Product Owner Attend Retrospectives?
The short answer is YES. The Product Owner is part of the Team The Product Owner is part of the team, and should be involved in any discussions about improving things. A scrum team will never reach its maximum potential if only the developers discuss areas to improve. The first question I would ask is […]
Blockers Don’t Exist in Agile
But not in the way you are thinking. Terminology is very important, not just in our professional capacity, but also in life. Words have connotations, especially something so drastic as a ‘Blocker’. Think about it though, does everything on a project stop when someone mentions a ‘blocker’? Not really, what happens is that progress slows […]
Late For The For the Daily Stand Up? You’ll Be Sorry!
What happens if you are for the Scrum Daily Stand Up? The daily stand up is a very important meeting. It sets the tone for the day and ensures that everyone is in line. Have you noticed that people have started to turn up late? Are people starting to get lazy or too comfortable? Incentivise […]
