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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
How to balance business and technology requirements in a product backlog to build a successful product in long term. Product ownership is hard stuff. Very often you feel schizophrenia. Often you play for a customer, but later, suddenly, you have to protect your team. Sometimes you are pushed by the business, later by architects [...]
When is the best to accept the user story which is finished and who should accept them? In our Agile and Scrum Fundamentals training, people are (surprisingly) surprised when we present our approach of the acceptance of finished work. At the begging we often observe disagreements, but after a few minutes of an explanation why [...]
Sprint planning is one of the most important ceremonies in the Scrum project management method. Why run it and how? Even the Sprint planning ceremony doesn't seem to be complex, many Agile teams consider it a waste of time. "Let's develop something instead of loosing so much time in the sprint planning." This is [...]
The Agile company can be recognized by the presence of Kanban boards with index cards of user stories which are put into multiple columns based on their status. Such a board looks simple and easy to handle. For agile teams, this is very welcome due to a low level of bureaucracy, high transparency, and [...]
Roadmaps Editor Real start and end These fields are calculated based on the progress of nested backlog items once their subtask were started. New Delta fields They indicate how much late or earlier the feature has been developed comparing to plans specified in a roadmap. Other changes of the roadmap editor Even ScrumMaster can see [...]
Do you take care of the complex agile project developed with one or more scrum teams? Are your teams dislocated? Or do you manage product portfolio with the help of ScrumDesk? Now you can do scheduling of the project in ScrumDesk not just with releases or sprints. ScrumDesk Roadmaps are an easy way to plan and schedule [...]
The first blog post about prioritization was focused on MoSCoW - prioritization of the backlog from the perspective of customers. This is not enough for the products development of the commercial company. You need to survive, to pay bills, to pay the next sprints. You have to think about features from the perspective of the [...]
Prioritization is probably the most discussed part of development processes. Product backlogs are often quite complex with hundreds of requirements. How to find user stories in your story map which you should start developing first? Traditional approach The approach of traditional processes is simple. You have high, medium, low priorities. Ok, for some organizations [...]
Agile works very well in a product-oriented environment. It’s understandable, as Agile Manifesto as a key document of whole Agile stresses the functional product as one of the most important values. When implementing agile practices, Product development is very often reduced to: Description of responsibilities for Product Owner role, Request recording, Maintenance of backlogs, [...]
Performance improvements We continued with performance improvements targeting the second(s) goal instead of minutes for large backlogs. We are happy to share we were successful, but also that doesn't mean we have ended. As Backlog and Work views are the most used parts of the application, we have chosen them for performance improvements of [...]
Planning in Agile Our aim is to create a tool very similar to the physical board on which team members are working with cards in different corners of the planning board. The board that can be split into more panes and swim lines representing either backlog, different releases or sprints. The board on which you can see customer's stories. Product owners [...]
An index card for user story Fundamental XP practice is to keep requirements written on an index card. The index card should be: small, therefore requirement has to be written clearly, movable, so the product backlog is visually clean, resizable, so the size of cards can help to organize backlog, colored, so teams can categorize [...]
Product management is about searching for the most important requirement that needs to be delivered as the next. There are different prioritization practices. One such dimension that product owner should be aware of is expected customer satisfaction. Satisfaction with developed feature or story. Mr. Noriaki Kano developed Kano model as valuable technique helping to recognize that. Applying this [...]
Agile coaches teach teams to develop a business value that is delivered at the end of the sprint. But should be a value an indicator of the priority? Yes, but not the only one. There are many other attributes we often forget to consider. We suggest applying a different approach. We would like to have [...]
In this step, the Product Owner and development team will try to plan project releases. Who Product Owner Scrum Master Planning in SCRUM SCRUM is based on development in timeboxes called Sprint. Sprint is the time needed to complete selected stories (features, bugs, requirements, tasks,...). The length of the sprint is typically 30 days, [...]
In this step product owner and development team will try to plan project sprints. Who Product Owner Scrum Master Planning in SCRUM In Step 4 Planning product releases we defined sprint as time box for developers to complete selected stories. Product Development Product Backlog Release A Release B Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 ScrumDesk: Planning [...]
In this step product owner and development team are going to plan project sprints. Who Product Owner Creating stories The target for this step is to create backlog stories. Product Development Product Backlog Stories in scrum are mainly created by the product owners. As a first step let's log in as product owners. The product [...]
In this step development team is going to estimate stories. Who Scrum Master Developers Planning Poker® Our backlog contains all known stories which has to be developed for product. Team sits down together around the table and they starts to discuss size of each story. Product Development Product Backlog Every developer will get cards [...]
In this step product, owner and development team will plan sprint. Who Product Owner Scrum Master Developers Visitors Sprint planning meeting Development team meats with the product owner on sprint planning meetings. The product owner shows the team his plan for the first sprint. Product owners chose stories by top importance (priority). Planning View [...]
How to do Agile estimation with story points? Agile estimation is based on simple principles: apply relative comparison as people are better in relative estimation not absolute, compare items with estimation references included in the estimation catalogue, use a simple scale based on the modified Fibonacci scale numbers of which are known as the [...]
