If you have a lot of big user stories, your velocity will jump up and down wildly. This makes it extremely difficult to tell when a user story will be done. Breaking down your huge user stories into smaller ones will help you smooth the flow and give you a clearer picture. User Stories Start … Continue reading Size Matters – Why You Should Prefer Small User Stories
Category: Kanban & Agile
How To Estimate User Stories When Using PivotalTracker
For a team new to agile software development, estimating user stories is not easy. The team is used to estimate tasks in hours and days, and know they're never right anyways. So why bother? In agile, estimating user stories relative to each other using story points can give you a fact based idea about what … Continue reading How To Estimate User Stories When Using PivotalTracker
Scrum What? New Community Edited Q&A Site About Agile, Lean, Kanban and Scurm
A lot of people I meet are interested in agile software development. Either they've heard about it or they participate in projects which use Scrum, Kanban, or Extreme Programming. They wonder whether it makes sense to do pair programming, which Kanban tools to use, how to get started with test driven development or how to … Continue reading Scrum What? New Community Edited Q&A Site About Agile, Lean, Kanban and Scurm
Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
It's amazing to see again and again how teams complicate their lives without any necessity. They dream up features "urgently" required by their imaginary customers and then start a death march to launch them at an arbitrary, self-invented date. Why is it so hard to simplify things and get going? Let's have a look at … Continue reading Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
Stop. Reflect. Adapt. The 3 Steps to Stop Writing Bad Code
Writing software that doesn't suck is hard - even for the pros. The problem doesn't lie in solving a hard problem, but in creating a solution which is easy to understand, robust, and easy to change. A lot of problems in teams and organizations stem from bad code. Bad code ruins the motivation of your … Continue reading Stop. Reflect. Adapt. The 3 Steps to Stop Writing Bad Code
Agile Links From The Archives
One finding from our survey was that a lot of you want to read more about agile basics. As most of you haven't followed Agile Web Operations since Day One, here's a list of the top three posts about agile and kanban: Agile Is About Feedback, Not About Fancy Practices Kanban vs. Iterative Development Kanban … Continue reading Agile Links From The Archives
Pragmatic Personas: Concrete Examples of Your Users
Jeff Patton's talk at agile 2009 about Pragmatic Personas is quite interesting. I've seen talks about personas way back at agile 2007 already, but, at that time, I found them quite "bulky" to use. In pragmatic personas I see more value. What is a Pragmatic Persona? Jeff defines a pragmatic persona by having a name … Continue reading Pragmatic Personas: Concrete Examples of Your Users
Sub-optimization Kills Customer Value
When we start optimizing our processes, it happens quite often that we only optimize our area of influence instead of addressing the whole process of creating customer value. When we're responsible for a software development or an operations team, we tend to optimize the process of our team. We adapt agile practices and our teams … Continue reading Sub-optimization Kills Customer Value
Agile Is About Feedback, Not About Fancy Practices
Too often people complain that to become agile they need to start using iterations, fancy story points and time boxes even though it simply does not fit the way they work. But, that's not true. Agile is much simpler than that. And much harder. In essence, agile is about fast feedback. But the feedback needs … Continue reading Agile Is About Feedback, Not About Fancy Practices
Kanban WIP Limits – The Fine Art of Focus
If you want to get things done, focus is the key. Single piece flow (focusing on only one task at a time) might be too extreme, but limiting your work to your capacity is mandatory. No matter whether we're talking about a team, an organization or about your personal productivity. Kanban For Personal Productivity If … Continue reading Kanban WIP Limits – The Fine Art of Focus
