How does project management fit into Agile?
If you read my last post, you’re probably thinking I’m against all forms of project management, and want to consign project managers to the dustbin of history. That is not at all the case. I actually think there is a role for (some form of) project management in Agile, especially in large organisations. It just […]
Continue readingAgile Release Planning as a range of probabilities
A lot of people find release planning difficult and confusing in Agile. How can we plan out our releases when we don’t have fixed scope? When will we know something is ready for release? How do we use velocity in agile to help our planning? Are releases tied to iterations? I’m going to try and […]
Continue readingDifference between Agile and Lean
What is the difference between Agile and Lean? A lot of people are asking about the difference between Agile and Lean. Are they the same? Which came first? Which is better? Better for what? That depends a lot on your context. You also need to understand the background and purpose of each approach. This article […]
Continue readingWhy Continuous Delivery is so important
Scrum is a (pretty) good framework for managing requirements, how they move into and out of backlogs, and how we inspect and adapt the outcome of those requirements. But one of its weaknesses is it has basically nothing to say about engineering practices. (As opposed to say Extreme Programming). One of those engineering practices is […]
Continue readingServant Leadership and management by measurement
I was reading a strange post on Linkedin Pulse about some wacky new system for story point estimation. The details of it aren’t interesting or important. What is interesting is the motivation behind it. The imaginary problem that many people think needs to be solved is that traditional managers, when moved (kicking and screaming) to […]
Continue readingDon’t split people across agile teams
Why do people get split across agile teams? People sometimes get split across teams when working agile (or Waterfall, for that matter). You might hear things like “this team has two front-end developers, two back-end developers, a UX designer, a tech BA, and 50% of an architect”. Why 50%? There are usually two reasons: The […]
Continue readingScrum-but and Agile anti-patterns
There are many stories about Scrum-but, agile anti-patterns, and common agile misconceptions. If you’re wondering about the term, it comes from the idea “we’re doing Scrum, but we” [do something that is completely the opposite of what it says to do in Scrum]. Often this is because a firm doesn’t want to make changes when […]
Continue readingWhy not use velocity to compare teams?
So if you read my last post, you might be wondering, why not use velocity to compare teams? Some people do this, some people don’t. The agile software development community is pretty united in their recommendation here though. There are a number of problems with using velocity that way. So why not use velocity to […]
Continue readingProduct versus Sprint backlog
I was reading a long and strange rant against Agile recently. It’s this one, if you’re curious and you have a lot of time to burn. It confirmed my belief that people often don’t understand the difference between the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog. This is a really important distinction. If people get it wrong, […]
Continue readingMisconceptions around Minimum Viable Product
One of the most controversial topics in Agile / Lean thinking at the moment is the Minimum Viable Product, or MVP. This article will try and clear up the misconceptions around Minimum Viable Product. What is a Minimum Viable Product? This concept came from Eric Ries’ influential book, The Lean Startup (which you should definitely read if […]
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