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 ...
- 8,446
13
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 ...
- 19.5k
12
votes
Does running an agile squad mean that all squad members can do any work, or work should be divided based on skill set?
Cross Functional has more than one layer of meaning.
At the lowest level, a cross functional team simply means that all skills needed to deliver a usable increment are present on the team. At this ...
- 12.5k
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 ...
- 37.1k
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 ...
- 15k
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 ...
- 19k
7
votes
Scope creep and creepy stories?
Scope creep is uncontrolled change in the scope of work, with other project constraints staying in place as initially estimated. It tends to be a concept that mostly applies to predictive styles of ...
- 15k
7
votes
Does running an agile squad mean that all squad members can do any work, or work should be divided based on skill set?
First, let me say your team is incredibly unbalanced. You have one architect, one designer, one UX expert and one data expert per developer. That is ridiculous. Those roles are multipliers. They are ...
- 8,446
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 ...
- 689
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
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 ...
- 19k
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 ...
- 8,446
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 ...
- 19k
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 ...
- 6,216
4
votes
Scope creep and creepy stories?
TL;DR
"Creepy stories" are not going to be understood by anyone outside your company as anything other than scary fairy tales or novels. This is not a term of art within project management ...
- 50.1k
4
votes
Who ensures that the backend API is compatible with the user interface?
There is no universally applicable SDLC or associated roles. Who is ultimately responsible or accountable depends on how your organization has defined roles and their associated responsibilities and ...
- 19k
3
votes
Agile Retrospective: Comments Anonymous?
It depends, mostly on the level of trust between team-members.
In the best practise situation people are open and have the courage to be themselves, transparent and traceable. Sometimes it helps if ...
- 5,543
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 ...
- 50.1k
3
votes
How to improve Scrum Master performance
Others have already pointed out that there is likely a conflict between your manager's expectations and your Scrum Master role. I'm not going to cover that again.
However, there are things you can and ...
- 31
3
votes
Should iteration (sprint) dates in Azure DevOps include non-development phases of Agile sprints?
I'd like to share the direct answer, but then explain the why below. However, understand that I'm telling you what Scrum says you should do and why it is structured that way. Of course, if you don't ...
- 16.9k
3
votes
In Scrum, should we prepare the Product Backlog at the beginning of each Sprint or only at the beginning of the project?
The product backlog is a list of all the work we expect to do on the product. Some of the items on the product backlog may be ready to be started, but other items may just be outlines, with more ...
- 19.5k
3
votes
Accepted
Can an operations manager join a team's daily meetings to observe as a "fly on the wall"?
What does the team think?
The concern about the impact on group interaction and safety, especially in the context of a Sprint Retrospective, is especially valid. However, the desire to learn more ...
- 19k
3
votes
Can an operations manager join a team's daily meetings to observe as a "fly on the wall"?
In principle, the daily meeting is a public meeting where anyone who is interested can listen in. Active participation in the meeting should though be limited to the members of the Scrum Team, to ...
- 2,760
3
votes
Scope creep and creepy stories?
Scope creep means uncontrolled change. That doesn't seem to apply to your situation because the PO approved the change.
Adding new stories that impact the sprint goal may be an indication that sprints ...
- 6,216
3
votes
Does running an agile squad mean that all squad members can do any work, or work should be divided based on skill set?
Having a cross-skilled team gives you flexibility. It means you can take in different types of stories and still maintain a good utilisation (nobody overworked, nobody with nothing to do).
However, ...
- 19.5k
2
votes
Should iteration (sprint) dates in Azure DevOps include non-development phases of Agile sprints?
In Scrum, there's no such thing as "non-development phases" during a Sprint. Sprints have no phases. A Sprint begins with a timeboxed Sprint Planning event and concludes with the Sprint ...
- 19k
2
votes
How do you estimate for a 're-build' where you are rebuilding an existing piece of software, and can agile be used?
How do you estimate (in terms of time and cost) for a 're-build' where you are rebuilding an existing piece of software, and can agile be used?
A lot will depend on your software architecture and ...
- 19.5k
2
votes
How to include research tasks (e.g. user interviews, a contextual inquiry, etc.) or experiments (e.g. A/B test) to a sprint backlog?
The Scrum framework says little about product design. The Product Owner is a single person who is accountable for developing and communicating the Product Goal, creating and communicating Product ...
- 19k
2
votes
Agile Principles: What does "sustainable development" mean?
Some practical examples of sustainable development:
If you talk to the team on a Friday afternoon you can see they still have energy, still have focus and are not suffering from fatigue
If a ...
- 19.5k
2
votes
Agile Principles: What does "sustainable development" mean?
This one isn't really a principle at all, more like an observation about what the effect of taking an agile approach might be. As per Bogdan's great answer, the manifesto's view of sustainability may ...
- 6,216
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