Don’t Blindly Follow

Don’t Blindly Follow

Don't blindly adopt anything. Scrum is comprised of a self-organizing team that is given...
How I Work, and Use Scrum Personally

How I Work, and Use Scrum Personally

I’ve been asked a few times to comment on how I work, what it is I do to stay highly productive, and how I use Scrum at a personal level to make that happen. I tend to work in one-week sprints…
Who Picks the Sprint Length on a Scrum Team?

Who Picks the Sprint Length on a Scrum Team?

Of course, the answer is the whole team – that collective of ScrumMaster plus product owner plus team members such as programmers, testers, designers, DBAs, analysts and so on. But what if that…
Are Vanity Metrics Really All That Bad?

Are Vanity Metrics Really All That Bad?

I have a bit of a problem with all the hatred shown to so-called vanity metrics. Eric Ries first defined vanity metrics in his landmark book, The Lean Startup. Ries says...
Capacity-Driven Sprint Planning

Capacity-Driven Sprint Planning

There are two primary ways for planning a sprint: velocity-driven sprint planning and commitment-driven sprint planning. In last week’s post, I described velocity-driven planning; so in this…
Velocity-Driven Sprint Planning

Velocity-Driven Sprint Planning

There are two general approaches to planning sprints: velocity-driven planning and capacity-driven planning. Over the next three posts, I will describe each approach, and make my case for the one I…
What Is Quality?

What Is Quality?

Agile teams build high-quality products. Agile team members write high-quality code. Agile teams produce functionality quickly by not sacrificing quality. Each of these is something I’ve said…