Questions tagged [agile]
Use this tag for any questions that involve agile approaches from the perspective of a project manager, Scrum Master, agile coach, or similar role. Please note that "Agile" is not a framework or methodology, and this tag should NOT be used for questions about agile frameworks when a more suitable tag exists.
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How to handle a Sprint completed ahead of time? [duplicate]
Let's say we have a sprint of 2 weeks. In that sprint, the IT team has to implement some issues or features. How can we handle the case where the team finishes all issues/features ahead of time?
Do we ...
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3
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Managing Contractors in a technology conversion effort of an application
We recently hired a firm to convert an application from .NET to .NET Core.
We have provided access to all repositories, they've been given an overall demo of major features and functions, access to a ...
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What's the point of having acceptance criteria when you have defined in a design document what you want done and how?
I recently found myself debating about the usefulness of acceptance criteria in a user story. Bear in mind that the team in question is not a feature team, it is a technical component team (if that ...
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Is scrum certification enough to switch from construction project management to IT Project management domain?
I had short experience in construction industry, then I completed MBA in Project management. I am equipped with MS project Primavera P6. Now I am thinking of switching into IT industry. Will Agile ...
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How to scale Agile in IT Service company (not product based)
I work for a company which is trying to understand how to scale Agile. We are an IT Service company, we don't work on one product, we develop many IT projects at the same time for our customers and we ...
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Should we create sub-tasks for each story by default representing all the different types of work the story will require
One of my colleagues proposed an idea to split stories by default each time we write stories for the project into sub-tasks to represent different types of work a story has.
We are using Scrum and ...
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What does a Product Owner do if they disagree with the CEO's direction on product strategy?
What can, and should, a Product Owner / Product Manager do if the CEO has mandated that the team builds something which the Product Owner feels is not in the best interests of the customer?
Aside from ...
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Developer keeps underestimating tasks time
This is one of my first projects in charge, and I am leading a team of 2 dev, a senior and a mid-level one.
The mid-level developer is underestimating his time on most tasks. He is telling me that ...
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Recommended framework to organize a 12-developers team that will work on different products
The developers team is composed of 12 people. Several products need to be built, and although these products benefit the same line of business in the company, they are not necessarily related each ...
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How to boost internal communication within a Scrum Team
I have collected feedback from my team about what area they want to work on and that is internal communication.
They want to improve the frequency and quality of interactions basically. So asking and ...
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Strength and weakness for Product Manager interview question [closed]
In job interviews for a project manager position, the interviewer often asks the applicant to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses. What is the interviewer hoping to learn by asking this? How ...
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Agile in Data Science - how can I do it best
I work in a data science team and we're starting along the path of agile development.
We will be working in 2 week sprint cycles.
Once we have a clear view of what we are doing, it looks good - we can ...
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Cancelled project retrospective format
Can anyone recommend a retrospective format for a cancelled project?
The attendees will be the development team but also some of the more senior stakeholders.
The idea is to reflect on the hard work ...
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How to handle business change within an agile development environment?
Most of the questions around agile development processes are focused on the IT side of the work, leading to technical changes that are implemented. In parallel with these technical changes, there can ...
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How do you differentiate between Product & (Dev) Ops activities for an Agile project?
I have worked with various sizes of organisations and everyone has had a way of seperating between DevOps (Engineering) activities and Product (Functionality development) activities.
Some had ...
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The career path of a Scrum Master
A Scrum Master has a pretty small team (as per the Scrum Guide) and it's not recommended for a Scrum Master to work with more than two teams. Agile and Scrum are still not everywhere adopted, ...
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Trying to understand my CFD
Newbee to the agile world, we are practicing kanban in our organization and we use Jira to manage our flows. I am trying to understand the CFD Jira generates for us, but the whole CFD idea confuses me....
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QA is at capacity, Development has room
Let's say you have five developers and one QA tester.
All 5 developers can commit to X number of user stories.
In Planning, QA decides he'll need Y number of hours per story to test.
What is the ...
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How to estimate sprint velocity when there is a change in story points in scrum
Initially, the Product Backlog contained 350 story points of PBIs. After completing 7 sprints of development, the Product Backlog contains 140 story points of PBIs .
The average velocity is 30 per ...
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Under what circumstances should outsiders attend a scrum team’s ceremonies?
I work with a team of 5 scrum masters each of which has one or 2 teams.
There is one agile coach.
The agile coach wants to “observe” all the ceremonies of my team. He wants to do this to “coach” me. ...
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What framework or methodology would you recommend for a Data Science team?
I am a Scrum Master for a team of mostly Data Scientists and some Software Engineers and a Product Owner.
Our organisation has decided that all teams work in 2 week sprints using Scrum. I personally ...
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Do you have to deliver working software in an Agile timebox/sprint?
In the Agile manifesto one of their values is:
Working software over comprehensive documentation
This got me thinking does this value stand in all circumstances? Especially in the circumstance of an ...
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What to do when the team prefers private communications on mail and chat over collaborative tools like Jira?
I've noticed that a lot of discussion between a developer and a Product Owner happens in private conversations in various communication tools (Skype, Slack, email, etc). The reason is because these ...
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Is there planning in Scrum?
As a project manager/scrum master, I has been required to make sure that the team completes the work that was planned for a Sprint and, what is more important, for a Release. Are these demands correct?...
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Optimizing kanban workflow due to lagging dependency
The following describes a situation where I am no longer part of. I recently had a shower thought about the past situation and wanted to see how the situation could've been improved. This is my first ...
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How to (Agile) manage a fairly complex IT PoC?
I'm a technical lead employed by in an agile IT organization where most teams observe Scrum.
I'm 2 weeks into a task of building a proof-of-concept of a service that is fairly sizable and complex (...
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What are the main reasons Scrum doesn't admit managers?
How can I explain the fact we aren't gonna manage the team to a customer? The customer will ask why is not-managing better than managing?
Scrum introduces self-organizing teams. Why doesn't Scrum ...
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Kanban Buffers and Queues
Reading about Kanban, I often encounter things like buffers and queues being mentioned. But I don't understand the difference. For example:
A, B and C are queues or buffers? What's their role? What ...
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What agile process promotes the team to assign tasks to individual developers istead of individuals assigning tasks for themselves?
Developer /architect / developer 20 years experience. I did an experiment at my previous project where I created a scrum-like process but we decided developers to not pick directly their tasks, but ...
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Are self-organizing teams subject to self-blocking, when there's a disagreement?
There may be a situation when half of the self-organizing team isn't accepting a decision proposed the the other half of the self-organizing team. This situation effectively stops the project's ...
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How to handle learning tasks in scrum?
Today in our team we faced interesting issue. One of my colleagues wanted to learn basics of some technology which is about to be used in the project. How such an activity should be handled in scrum ...
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QAs get all the Work at the End of Sprint
We have an issue in our Scrum Agile process, where all the Developers get PBI work done in the last few days of the sprint.
And then QA is forced to test everything at end of sprint. What is the ...
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What contract type to use when the scope is largely defined (but NOT completely)?
The fixed-price contract is generally used when the scope of the project is clearly defined. The T&M contract is generally used when the scope of the project can't be clearly defined (a customer ...
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What non-Agile project management methodologies are used nowadays?
What non-Agile project management methodologies are used nowadays? I know that Waterfall is in use. What else?
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Who Owns Backlog Prioritization?
I recently had a meeting with several executives/managers wherein we determined that what the Product Owner had communicated, and the Product Manager had prioritized in the backlog, was no longer what ...
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In Agile methodologies, what happens when team completes a backlog item or user story?
I need to know that does team need some kind of approval or something from product owner or scrum master when it completes a user story. And if not, then how the team proceed with this kind of ...
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How do you integrate Agile Scrum work within your project WBS
Agile Scrum, for example, is a methodology applied to organize the work under uncertainty, where adaptation is required as the work progresses. There is always an objective behind the effort, be the ...
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Is Scrum team subject to project time pressure?
Did I get it right that Scrum team is never subject to project time pressure (no demanding to complete tasks within estimates, no deadlines, etc)? I mean external pressure (such as from the customer ...
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Should the Product Owner be from our organization or the company we are contracting with?
We're a governmental organization and we're contracting with software companies to implement our projects. We're adapting the Scrum framework.
Question: Should the Product Owner be from our ...
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Estimation of project duration on Adaptive methodology
There are 2 ways to predict the duration of the tasks in a project. The first is by using a Gannt chart like the one bellow for the Predictive methodology (Waterfall approach):
The second way is the ...
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SAFe Innovation & Planning vs. Sprint Planning
We're moving to SAFe in my company, and I have trouble understanding the differences. I'm certified in Scrum (CSM/CSPO), but don't know much about SAFe, and I don't really see much of a difference ...
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How can a customer be sure that a Scrum team isn't wasting their money?
As far as I understand, Scrum doesn't impose obligations on a software development company - no fixed date of project's completion, no fixed budget.
How can a customer be sure that a Scrum team isn't ...
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How can I train a team of engineers about user story points in 30 mins
Does anyone know how I can train a bunch of engineers about user story points in 30 mins.
I wanted to make it fun and interactive but I only have 30 mins.
My initial idea was to simply go over the ...
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How a software development contract is concluded?
Let's suppose a customer wants to create a software product and there is a software development company that is able to develop this product. They need to create a contract.
But both sides has their ...
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Is it possible to give timelines in SCRUM?
Our team is currently using a very SCRUM near approach in planning and development. But I constantly face one issue with our management. The management is part of the backlog priority process and each ...
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QA resource allocation in scrum sprint
I am a developer by trait so I don't have a lot PM exposure. Due to circumstances I need to manage a small team which includes 4 developers and 2 QAs.
We are currently following loosely the "...
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How can a small team of devs maintain many products at the same time?
I work as a software engineer in a team of 5 devs that develop and maintain 4 different projects
I'm mainly responsible for 2 products:
a "trashware" product, and some part of a legacy ...
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Agile Development Practices in a Vendor-led App Development [closed]
As the product owner, what is the best approach to administering the scrum framework in vendor-led app development? And eliminate the difficulty of ensuring they build and deploy in line with a sprint ...
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Help - Technical team does not want to work in agile way
I am a Product Owner on a Scrum Team whose developers do not want to embrace work in an agile, incremental fashion. Simple example: the customer currently has to contact us to create users each time ...
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Time management in a Sprint
During a sprint, producing frequent builds, conducting testing, and fixing bugs quickly during an iteration can become daunting, especially when the quality of the work done is not optimum. So how can ...
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