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.
An organization is looking into AI to streamline story point estimation for its agile work. The leadership believe that AI is going to simplify the process, increase productivity and improve accountability. But its agile teams are pushing back.
Goals are good for any team, including agile ones. However, it’s possible to set goals that seem to make sense but are ineffective and might even hurt the work of the team and the product. Let’s look at three goal setting “anti-patterns” that should be avoided.
As operating costs and demand care continues to soar, it has become imperative to minimize financial risk in healthcare design projects. Here are four strategies that emphasize ongoing prioritization, repurposing, and collaborative delivery.
Instead of driving the completion of tasks, project leaders should point teams in the right direction and empower them to deliver positive results. Good teams become great when they have the resources needed to succeed, the flexibility to innovate, and the ownership to grow.
By committing to full capacity, teams often must make compromises, accepting partial work or splitting work. But by leaving some capacity available, teams can take on additional work based on customer feedback or new information without disrupting the existing plan—and deliver more.
As people take time off for the year-end holidays, team capacity fluctuates and planning is a challenge. Here are four options to make the best use of the time and people available, while trying not to create more stress and frustration.
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.
Project leaders need their teams to be accountable to tasks, deadlines, quality and a host of other things. But without position-level authority, gaining commitment is a common challenge. Avoiding these three faulty commitment expectations can help.
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.
Well-framed problem statements can greatly improve a team’s problem solving, but they also can help project leaders define goals and objectives, design metrics and develop strategies. Here’s practical guidance on creating more effective problem statements, from the author of People Solve Problems.
There is increased focus on measuring project performance in terms of business outcomes. What does that mean for agile projects? How should value be measured in an agile environment?
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.
When the pandemic ends, we won’t be going back to the way things were—not completely. We’ve developed new ways of working, and while there is no substitute for in-person collaboration, there are work and team processes that won’t be revived in many organizations because they’ve been improved upon.
We can’t just say, “We need to be more agile and less waterfall.” We’re making a recommendation before explaining a problem. Instead, we need to build a shared understanding based on detailed, specific data. Here are a couple examples of how to do it.
Project leaders have a key role to play in innovation. It starts with giving teams the flexibility to be creative and develop unexpected results. Facilitating customer interaction helps teams explore what is actually needed and get in the mindset to deliver it. And stakeholders must be prepared for change and ambiguity, instead of predictability.
To truly achieve business agility, organizations must ensure their underlying operating systems support it. Six areas are crucial to success: leadership and management; culture; structure; people and engagement; governance and funding; and processes and practices.
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.
On a distributed project, the team can’t rely on the informal, incidental information-sharing that occurs when we’re roaming the same hallways or going out for lunch. That’s why an intentional communication strategy is needed to keep everyone informed and involved.
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.
The sudden shift to remote work this year has forced us all to adapt. How does it change how agile teams develop and grow? And how can we ensure effective communication, consistency and alignment? Here are some answers and things to consider.
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.
With the self-organized, self-managed model employed on many agile projects, it’s up to team members to resolve their differences among themselves. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need help.
After you've assembled a cross-functional innovation team and aligned around a goal, it's time to start using metrics and data to track the most important things, supported by a scorecard that everyone can see. This will help establish a rapid rhythm and generate positive velocity on your innovation journey.
“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.
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.
This pandemic is going to change the way projects are handled for the near term—and some changes will stay in effect long after the crisis. Indeed, some of the new ways of working may prove to be better than the old ways, including interacting in an asynchronous manner.
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