Category: Concepts

Quick post to point out two other blogs I recommend you read. User story mapping is an essential practice for every agile team. Have a read of Understand What Your Customers Want with Agile User Story Maps to get some background and then follow up with Anatomy of an Agile User Story Map for the details.

Often if a team picks up too much work it is because they don’t fully understand, or can’t see, the cost associated with their action. Fortunately there is an exercise you can run with a team in 10 minutes to help them see first hand the cost of context switching. 3’s & 5’s 3’s and 5’s is really simple… Continue reading Minimise Context Switching

As companies grow they place ever greater demands on their IT (and/or Engineering) organisations. There are constant requests for assistance, be they from the CMO who is looking to get a better understanding of customers to the customer support team looking to keep costs stable while expanding to 24×7 support. If you’re a VP or Director of Engineering… Continue reading Scale Engineering Effectively with Cross-Functional Teams

On Scrum teams we often speak of ideals. While these may not be immediately attainable by the team they are things a team should strive to attain as it will assist them in becoming a high performing team. One of these ideals is a T-shaped person. A t-shaped person is one who has breadth in… Continue reading Why Agile teams want t-shaped people

Burnover.  Another name for Stories or backlog items that are incomplete at the end of the current Sprint and fall into a subsequent Sprint.  Call it what you like, but if you want to reach your Agile Nirvana, then you need to develop better recognition, techniques for handling, and methods of prevention.  If not, then you… Continue reading Is Burnover Preventing your Team from Achieving Consistent Velocity?

New Scrum teams may find meeting their sprint commitments hard, it can be awkward at first! In this post Randall explains what planking is and how to avoid it.