The Mountain Goat Software Blog

Clarify when a product owner should influence technical decisions and when to leave the how to the team.

Recover from mistakes by focusing on the next useful action.

Learn about product backlog refinement: how, when, and why the agile team and product owner refine the product backlog in Scrum.

During a sprint retrospective, team members gather and discuss ways in which they can improve. This should include the ScrumMaster...

Leave room for the real work hidden inside every sprint.

Clarify the difference between user stories and tasks.

Define done at more than one level so expectations stay clear from story to release.

Don't blindly adopt anything. Scrum is comprised of a self-organizing team that is given...

See when letting teams work out of strict backlog order can improve flow and outcomes.

Separate vanity metrics from useful signals when deciding what to build or improve.

The problem with velocity-driven sprint planning is that velocity is simply too variable to be useful in the short term.

Plan sprints around real team capacity instead of relying only on past velocity.

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