How to break free from the traditional way of estimation in projects with the help of Agile estimation techniques and principles? Estimation is a widespread practice that businesses impose a significant emphasis on. Businesses include the estimation in their processes as a must-have part. Typical reasons for the estimation include the following: To understand the [...]
From our personal experience, we are all aware that with a lot of work and outside pressures, working on your personal development, trying to unite and move forward a team of people can be quite tricky, especially as we share our personal challenges. That’s why at ScrumDesk, we decided to gather a number of [...]
It happened once again. 2nd level support teams (outside of scrum/agile) raised new incidents towards the scrum teams (3rd level support). How to prioritize work between business requirements and non-business requirements where the Product Owner is focused primarily on business requirements? Product Owners should not focus on business requirements only. The Product Owner [...]
Should you use story points for a team of developers developing multiple systems? The situation This question was asked by scrum masters who's teams are not ideal agile teams as the company introduces agile in multiple steps. Their team typically consists of experts focused on web, ledger, back- ends PHP / Java. They are [...]
Previously, we’ve shown you how to write a great elevator statement and some real-life examples. In this post, we’ll show you why you should start writing an elevator statement right now and how it can help you not just create a valuable product for the customer, but also make the development easier. An elevator [...]
Start writing... We focused the second part of our elevator statement series on working with real-life examples and showing you similar tools. Learn how to make an elevator statement better by using our tips and asking the question we talked about in the first post. The first elevator statement Let’s take a look at [...]
What value your product brings? Can you explain in 30 seconds? You want to build a meaningful product that brings value to customers. But how can you do your best to stay on the right track? To focus on the features that matter or create a product that customers want to buy? Start with [...]
Understand the reasons, not just the process. Scrum's been around for over two decades and is helping many people successfully develop new products faster and more efficiently. This framework was officially first introduced to the public in 1995 by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, but as the authors say, it's not anything that hasn't [...]
How to split user stories properly? In previous articles you could read more on the split by workflow steps and by operations. This article brings examples on the user stories splitting by business rules variation. Business rules The business works in very complex environment. Complex technologies, global competition, complex design of [...]
Agile and Scrum have become widely used in IT and even though the advantages of this framework are numerous, some people just don’t like it. A lot of them had their own experience with Scrum, in particular with bad Scrum. Attending 45 minutes long “daily stand-ups”, Scrum Master demanding overtime because other team’s velocity [...]
Being agile means receiving feedback, accepting it and changing. To get feedback you probably do retrospective once a sprint, but there are other activities that can provide ideas at any time, motivate and “spice up” your retro all at once. We’re talking about Kudo cards. Kudo cards is a technique described in Management 3.0 [...]
User stories splitting, working with epic, epic splitting into user stories. One great art. In the first part, we have shown you examples for splitting requirements into smaller ones by the process. Although this is the last division step for many Product Owners, this is not enough for a reasoned app. In this part, [...]
The examples were created in the form of a user story map using the ScrumDesk app, where you can easily create a backlog from epics to embedded features to user stories. So far, in our consultation with the agile teams, we have always encountered unfamiliarity in each team about how to split the requirements [...]
In your opinion, is the Product Owner a member of the team? Usually, the team's answer during agile mentoring is that they are not. Although the Product Owner is not familiar with the technical development, their presence on daily stand-ups is very important. However, since they do not participate in the implementation itself, the [...]
Do you feel that your team needs to improve relationships, or do you want to help them get to know each other better? Try personal maps with them, and you will not regret it. A personal map is a technique that helps people find common topics for conversation effortlessly and easily. Get inspired on [...]
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a frequently used word today in development. For a Product Owner it is one of the foundations of Agile and a successful product. However, are you sure you know what MVP is and how it differs from the minimum marketable product (MMP)? Many people mistake or misuse these terms. Even when [...]
It’s finally hot outside, and plane tickets to Spain are cheaper. Relaxing by the sea or relaxing from these heatwaves in Norway means temporarily leaving your team. Even if you only leave for two weeks, it may be challenging for them. Or for you, if during your vacation instead of googling the opening hours [...]
On Agile briefly Agile methods are methods that apply iterative and evolutionary development. 12 agile principles employ adaptive planning, promote incremental delivery, and include other values and practices that encourage agility. What does that really mean for software development? What are the implications for daily business? Let's analyze these principles and see where this [...]
A few years ago, Mike Cohn promoted a user-story format of requirements. Since then, every requirement has become accustomed to being a user story in Scrum. Even then, when it is not considered to be a good one and even if it is not written in this format. User Story The User Story format [...]
At the turning point of the year, it’s time for the interviews in companies. Favorite review of last year’s work and proposal of new goals. Plus, their KPI. Key Performance Indicators. At the given time, it was a topic of the week for me. I saw interesting KPI: Your goal is to make an [...]
Oh, that great idea once again. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%. Apparently, the feature is 79% done. Round of applause, that’s a nice number. Nicer than 78%. Masturpercentobation. But what Jeff has to do with that, yes, that user Jeff. Team: ‘Ugh nothing we can do now, we have to wait 3 weeks for the next sprint release.’ Product [...]
A story about a leader and management motivated to actively support Agile. Just the title sounds like an oxymoron to those of us, who apply Agile principles. Yes, I have to affirm that Agile is often perceived by management as another toy for the developers. That’s why the implication of Agile is a whole [...]
The Definition of Ready helps save a lot of money on development for little effort. Or, why define requirements properly. The Punkers team The Punkers have been the worse team for a client and their management for several years now. Their requirements are constantly stretched, and even if they can be completed, the client [...]
Lots of requirements. Lots and lots and lots A story about what will your ‘Yes’ answer cause in the long run. Lots of work. If it was about fire being once here and once there. But the fire burns always, everywhere and every single day. We develop a number of system customizations and our app [...]
Yet another week of mentoring is over, the next team is ready and another one prepared. This time it was, as always, quite unique and interesting. As I always say. We met a new team of people, working in a successful company and even though they’ve been sat in the same room for more [...]
About the life of the agile team, relations, Scrumastership, responsibilities and some good practices. “KEEP CALM SCRUM MASTER IS HERE" When I started in one of the company’s development team, I had no experience with Scrumastership. The team was already formed and was in the “storming” phase. After coming into the team we reset the [...]
Self-organized teams are fundamental to the success of agile approaches. But what does self-organization means? 5-6 years ago we started to introduce agile to CxO of multiple clients. I remember that the most unbelievable for them was a term self-organized teams. Well, it was unimaginable to see people working without any Mr. Commander. Without [...]
Chooses the right things. Many customers of our consultancy services ask us for some brief and practical description of the role of the Product Owner. Here is our attempt to provide not just some theory, but some additional practical tips for this role as well. The Product Owner The Product Owner role is a [...]
What is an agile epic, what to use it for and foremost how? Requirements. Small, large, technical, business, operational, researchable. And above all, plenty of them. During four years of ScrumDesk development, we have more than 800 requirements in our backlog. And these are only requirements that we have decided to implement without any [...]
Are you distressed by the huge amount of defects in the product? In this article, you will learn about what practical possibilities you have in agile teams and managing error correction. One of the first questions that pop up whilst introducing agile is how to deal with errors. Too often I hear an immediate answer: [...]
