Too much work in progress present obvious problems to agile teams, but there are also issues that go beyond efficiency or productivity. Too much WIP can be a symptom of a team struggling to prioritize, it can impede collaboration, and thwart a team’s ability to swarm on a task.
AI can’t replace human interaction or discussion, but several easy-to-use tools can help surface issues and synthesizing data that require a project team’s attention, discussion and action. This can be particularly helpful when it comes to making the most of agile retrospectives.
By leveraging artificial intelligence, agile teams can gain greater insights into potential risks, make more informed decisions, and improve outcomes. From identification and forecasting to monitoring and contingency planning, here are four ways that using AI can make a positive difference in agile risk management.
When is an agile team ready to being work on a project? It’s not about eliminating uncertainty or understanding every nuance. The best teams define what “ready” means to them, and then work together to get requirements and stories where they need for work to commence.
SMART goals can help set realistic, measurable direction, but they are often too rigid for an agile team. An alternative framework known as CLEAR allows teams to adapt as they learn, going beyond set metrics and fostering collaboration to produce better outcomes.
A sprint review is an essential part of the agile process, where the team can demo new features and functionality. But the demo is only half the story. The sprint review is also an opportunity for productive conversation and feedback between the team and stakeholder, which will lead to a better product.
Backlog refinement sessions offer many benefits, but there are also well-intentioned activities—or antipatterns— that can be detrimental to the team. Here are five backlog refinement antipatterns to avoid, from focusing on estimates to removing requirements too quickly.
It is generally more accurate to use capacity rather than velocity to carry out sprint planning. Here’s why, along with five steps to make the most of this approach—including determining the team’s capacity, selecting and estimating, and adding work safely.
Agile has been “going mainstream” for more than a decade, but supporting evidence was more in the eye of the beholder. Maybe now it’s really happening. A new State of Agile report found growing adoption rates outside of software development and documented success in areas such as visibility and alignment.
Swarming is a method that agile teams can use to improve prioritization, collaboration, learning and overall delivery. Here’s a look at how it works—and how you can benefit from using it on your teams.
A pro/con list is a simple, powerful tool for evaluating low- to medium-priority decisions, or as an initial thinking aid for any type of decision that involves no more than two options. Here’s a quick primer on how it works.
An important Agile principle holds that face-to-face interactions are the most efficient and effective way to communicate. But more than ever, project teams are working in a distributed manner. One agile activity that they can accomplish without much sacrifice is backlog grooming. Here’s an example.
Scope creep can plague projects where timelines are established at the start, or budgets and resources are fixed. However, it should not be a problem for projects operating with agile principles. Rather than resisting change, an agile team welcomes it, and figures out how to adapt to it. Here's how.
“Forced” agile adoptions will be part of COVID-19 recovery efforts for many organizations that hadn’t already built flexibility and rapid change into how they operate. It will require a mindset adjustment, a focus on outcomes over processes, and an investment in expertise.
Creating a simple, well-understood purpose that team members can get behind is critical on every project. In part two of our series on innovation teams, we share a framework for building your team’s commitment to a goal, encompassing vision, value, metrics, obstacles and measures.
Online or remote project meetings are the new normal for the foreseeable future. Here are 16 straightforward things you can do right now to make them much more effective.
Many agile teams craft their sprint goals in a bottoms-up fashion, using stories and tasks as their building blocks. But the mission of a sprint should be created from the top down, starting with what a successful iteration will look like. Here are four steps to create better sprint goals and a Sprint Goal Worksheet.
Backlogs are typically prioritized by product folks, so developers can often feel disempowered, which can create disagreement and disharmony. But multiple or split backlogs aren't the solution. Here are better ways to ensure a collaborative environment and a proper outcome for all.
We bring a critical eye and analytics to customer-facing demands — what users say they want is not always what they want, or what’s good for them. We should bring the same perspective to team-level issues — what’s really going on? How can we collaboratively engage the team? Can we experiment rather than argue about who’s right?
Weighted Shortest Job First is a widely used technique that can give guidance to the product owner as to how to prioritize the backlog in a rational way, supported by solid data. But if it is the only process used, it can lead to a mediocre priority list.
An agile process called Weighted Shortest Job First can help teams create a well-groomed, prioritized backlog. Let's take a look at how it works, through maintaining the frequency of releases and providing continuous value to the customer—while still factoring in things like risk profiles, future capabilities and the cost of delaying the work.
A Kanban-based approach to sprint planning can produce a number of benefits, particularly when it comes to limiting work in progress. Through mechanisms that uncover impediments and prioritize items, Kanban can help to create more productive sprints, more engaged teams and more satisfied stakeholders.
Start your agile development team with the mantra: No manual test cases! Quality comes from collaboration and rapid feedback, not documentation. Let’s take a look.
The use of agile methods lean toward faster delivery of results at a more frequent pace and in a more cost-conscious manner. However, not every project is best suited to be delivered in an agile way. As an agency partner, you need to be honest with yourself about where you are in your agile journey.
You’re joining a newly formed agile team. Whether as a PM, manager or team member, how can you help your team succeed? How do you stay on top of everything? The answer: FSVWT!
Kanban techniques can help agile and waterfall approaches better coexist, and they can help newcomers to agile become more comfortable with agile methods. From communication to motivation to education, let’s look at some ways Kanban can create common ground.
Agile approaches allow us to offer ways to manage investment, deliver value and deliver for the organization in various ways. Before you estimate, consider three questions and what they might buy you...
Many companies are outsourcing to India, and the process of creating an agile, distributed team could have many potential pitfalls. Here, lessons learned are shared based on two years of continuous improvement to get a strong, contributing agile scrum team.
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"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." - George Bernard Shaw |
