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…
Critiquing One of My Own Real User Stories

Critiquing One of My Own Real User Stories

In case you haven’t noticed, a few months ago we launched Front Row Agile, a site dedicated to video training courses on agile and Scrum. This has placed me in the role of product owner for the…
The Main Benefit of Story Points

The Main Benefit of Story Points

If story points are an estimate of the time (effort) involved in doing something, why not just estimate directly in hours or days? Why use points at all? There are multiple good reasons to estimate…
Ray Bradbury on the Benefits of Short Releases

Ray Bradbury on the Benefits of Short Releases

In 2001, author Ray Bradbury gave a talk at the annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea in San Diego. Fortunately for those of us who were not there, his speech was video recorded and is available.…