26
votes
Accepted
The contradictions between agile approach and the growth of individual team member
Let's unpack this a bit:
For example, a software engineer can be assigned to UX design tasks in the name of agility.
Agility is something people want to achieve because they can respond faster to ...
- 14.5k
25
votes
Agile Principles: What does "sustainable development" mean?
Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The explanation is right in the next sentence:
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
It means ...
- 8,348
12
votes
Agile Retrospective: Comments Anonymous?
The retrospectives I facilitate are not anonymous.
If a team member asked me to allow anonymous comments I would certainly do so. I would then try and investigate why psychological safety was so low ...
- 19.1k
11
votes
How to improve Scrum Master performance
The first issue with the feedback you received is on what basis was that judgement made? Your team is not fast enough compared to...? If they do not have a cogent basis upon which that judgement was ...
- 37k
10
votes
Agile Principles: What does "sustainable development" mean?
The meaning is stated within the principle itself: the sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
The answer from nvoigt is on point and provides examples ...
- 14.5k
8
votes
The contradictions between agile approach and the growth of individual team member
T-shaped skills mean that skills are shaped like the letter T: deep in some places, shallow in others. That is, skills are expected to be specialized, but with some sufficient understanding of ...
- 320
7
votes
The contradictions between agile approach and the growth of individual team member
All organizations value specialist skills. I think the question here is about how narrow and exclusive any specialist should be. To succeed in the technology professions requires almost constant ...
- 6,101
7
votes
In Scrum, should we prepare the Product Backlog at the beginning of each Sprint or only at the beginning of the project?
There's no such thing as a "fully ready and complete" Product Backlog.
The Product Backlog is emergent and frequently changes throughout the Sprint. Your Product Owner will probably be ...
- 18.8k
6
votes
Protecting the team against injection
The specifics depend on the nature of the changes and why they are happening, but it usually comes down to some kind of coaching.
If the reason is an incoming "high priority" request from a ...
- 18.8k
6
votes
What is a healthy [bug cards]/[total cards] ratio for game development?
That seems a very formal and ultimately futile way of viewing things.
Right now, your rate is X. Whatever ratio others tell you is good, that will not change your current reality.
And if you say Y is ...
- 8,348
6
votes
How do you estimate for a 're-build' where you are rebuilding an existing piece of software, and can agile be used?
There seems to be two questions here.
The method that you use to estimate a software rebuild effort is no different than the methods that you use to estimate a new software build effort. If and how ...
- 18.8k
6
votes
How to improve Scrum Master performance
That... doesn't make sense.
You can be the greatest Scrum Master in the world, and your team could still deliver below expectations, because you can neither influence their actual work, nor the ...
- 8,348
6
votes
How to improve Scrum Master performance
It seems like there is a disconnect between your interpretation of the Scrum Master role and your manager's and the RTE's interpretation of the Scrum Master role. There could even be several ...
- 18.8k
6
votes
Accepted
How to improve Scrum Master performance
Your manager is not happy with your team performance.
That's all what matters. Stop thinking about scrum or framework; stop thinking that he is not right because he doesn't understand scrum, etc.
Your ...
- 176
6
votes
Agile Principles: What does "sustainable development" mean?
Agile processes are often designed around terms of "pace" or "velocity", i.e. some measure based on often purely virtually-scaled story points, and some experience about how many ...
- 679
5
votes
Blockers and Impediments
How do others handle impediments and blockers reported at standups?
If they are simple then the team decides on an approach in the standup.
If they are a little more complex, two or more members of ...
- 19.1k
4
votes
Protecting the team against injection
Normally, Scrum - and Agile in general - is something you want to use in a context with rapidly changing priorities. So the team shouldn't need protecting from anything, because you want to move with ...
- 14.5k
4
votes
Blockers and Impediments
Keeping track of impediments and/or improvement opportunities is a good idea, but it's also a long-term solution.
At your standup, one of the priorities should be to identify blocked or impeded work ...
- 18.8k
4
votes
How to deal with people who are not motivated?
There is very little you can do as a Scrum Master, or they can do as a team, if their company treated them in a way that made it clear they are just numbers to be pushed around on an organization ...
- 8,348
4
votes
The contradictions between agile approach and the growth of individual team member
Agile methods tend toward small, cross-functional teams. This means that the team has the cross-functional skills needed to deliver the product or service on which they are working.
Depending on your ...
- 18.8k
4
votes
How do you estimate for a 're-build' where you are rebuilding an existing piece of software, and can agile be used?
Setting out with the intention of replicating something that already exists is arguably not the best way to deliver value or get support from business stakeholders. It's often that sort of thing that ...
- 6,101
3
votes
How pushy should a scrum master be?
Dogmatic and pushy are probably on the wrong end of the spectrum but you should be an opinionated facilitator of the agreed process.
As a scrum master you are responsible for designing the process ...
- 354
3
votes
Bugs in Sprint, which backlog
I'm not entirely clear on the relationship between "Sprint", "release", "team backlog" and "program backlog" in your case, so I'll need to keep my answer more ...
- 18.8k
3
votes
When should a user story be marked as "blocked" and not "To-do"
I'd ask the team what benefits does they find from having two user stories for the same piece of functionality?
I advise teams not to split backlog items into stories for specific disciplines. In this ...
- 151
3
votes
Is splitting user stories into versions a valid approach?
When stories were first used and written on cards put up on a wall, the title of the story was a memory-jogger for the team. The purpose was to give both the team and the stakeholder (or stakeholder ...
- 18.8k
3
votes
How should we capture "non-implementation" work?
There are typically two ways to use velocity with sprints:
Measure the team's capacity to do work - include all the work the team is doing in your calculations
Measure the team's capacity to deliver ...
- 19.1k
3
votes
Is given-when-then a standard for how acceptance criteria should be worded?
Requiring a specific structure for acceptance criteria is often wasteful, so I encourage teams to understand different structures for capturing their units of work, their acceptance criteria, and ...
- 18.8k
3
votes
How to breakdown MVP designs into testable user stories?
I think this is great question and one that many people are actually faced with. It's actually a product management question and I agree that a lot of times an example of a user interface is where it ...
- 354
3
votes
Accepted
What is a healthy [bug cards]/[total cards] ratio for game development?
TL;DR
You have one or more process problems that have been abstracted away into a proxy metric that is being used to "hold people accountable." This is almost always counterproductive, but ...
- 49.5k
3
votes
Accepted
How do you estimate for a 're-build' where you are rebuilding an existing piece of software, and can agile be used?
TL;DR
You have an X/Y problem. You have a client that can't or won't expend the time, effort, or cost needed to define the work, but wants a fixed price. You're trying to solve for "how can we ...
- 49.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible