14
votes
Accepted
If you already release continuously, what are the benefits of a Scrum Sprint of constant length?
TL;DR
A Sprint enshrines your empirical process by providing a maximum delivery cadence
It increases communication and alignment
It adds some predictability to the unpredictable nature of software by ...
11
votes
Accepted
What's the difference between Kanban vs Lean Kanban?
Lean is to Kanban as agile is to Scrum. One is a concrete implementation of the other.
Using the term "lean kanban" is just an attempt to court favour from Google/Bing for keyword density and is the ...
9
votes
Fast start guide for ScrumMaster
Zsolt gave a really great checklist for tackling any new project. I'd even point traditional project managers at this. I'm going to try and provide some additional Scrum focused detail.
Brand New ...
- 12.4k
9
votes
Accepted
Fast start guide for ScrumMaster
Do you do diligence and figure out as much as possible about the project, the people, the customer, and the stakeholders on your own.
Talk to each team member face to face about the things above, do ...
- 11.8k
8
votes
Accepted
How do you use kanban in an environment that requires a ton of waiting?
It looks like you have a process for doing your work that has intermediate stages where other people need to work on each work-item or card. And you have no control over how long they might take to ...
- 2,115
7
votes
Accepted
Rapid and efficient product development processes
They have a concept for a piece of software, we do some analysis and agree on reasonable budget and start agile development.
Good.
However once the client starts to see the product they cant (sic) ...
- 14.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Agile: Can Epics be time-based rather than feature-based?
There is some grey area here, but let's start with a clear answer to work from. Epics are a derived idea from User Stories - specifically an epic is just a big user story that you've broken down into ...
- 16.7k
6
votes
How do you use kanban in an environment that requires a ton of waiting?
TL;DR
A kanban board is only a tool to visualize work. What’s missing is a continual improvement process.
The Kanban Board Isn’t a Process
A kanban board is a useful tool for visualizing work, but ...
- 47.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Driving Changes on a peer-to-peer level
You can tactfully explore what changes have been made to improve the product or the team based on these metrics in the past few months. If these measurements have led to improvements or more effective ...
- 16.7k
5
votes
Accepted
How do you reduce card size and limit scope creep in R&D tasks?
TL;DR
If you're doing commercial R&D, then you should focus on directed development and manage the project around the research methodology chosen. Less directed research should simply be time ...
- 47.9k
5
votes
How to use Kanban for consulting work, take 2
From past experience it is very difficult to get someone to update one piece of work in two different places, so I would recommend having a single team board where all items are visible, but you can ...
- 405
5
votes
What's the difference between Kanban vs Lean Kanban?
Kanban is a lean methodology focused on creating continuous flow of work while eliminating waste (muda) in the system. There is no difference between Kanban and Lean Kanban.
Where there are some ...
- 3,922
5
votes
Accepted
Does SDLC process can be applied to Kanban columns?
In Kanban, the board is meant to visualize your process. By visualizing your process and tracking work through it, it is easier to spot your bottlenecks and challenges.
So, the direct answer to your ...
- 16.7k
5
votes
Driving Changes on a peer-to-peer level
Tough question; To my mind there are two choices:
Communicate the opportunity cost of vanity metrics to management. Measure the impact on project schedule/cost/quality by diverting resources away ...
- 8,697
5
votes
Driving Changes on a peer-to-peer level
First of: thanks for the link to the vanity metrics blog. It was an interesting read.
Second point summary: monetize the costs
Second: I dealt with the same issue at my previous company. I created ...
- 334
4
votes
If you already release continuously, what are the benefits of a Scrum Sprint of constant length?
You may find under your situation that a Scrum Sprint model does not fit well. It is just one way of doing things. Perhaps you are looking more of a Kanban approach
As for the usefulness of a sprint ...
- 219
4
votes
Driving Changes on a peer-to-peer level
If I would be the leader, I would just say. "Stop it. Don't waste time for this report".
Yes you could and this time you may be right. But are you always right?
The strength of a Scrum team is that ...
- 18.4k
3
votes
Accepted
What have you found is the most effective way of training a Scrum Master?
If the Client wants formalised sessions then the best option is to go to a formal session from Scrum.org or ScrumAlliance.
https://www.scrum.org/courses
https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/...
- 616
3
votes
Any ideas for mixing a kanban with taskboards
I'd start by moving to a physical task board. Tools can be great force multipliers. However if you start in a tool, you will often get influenced by the tool and end up doing process by tool. This is ...
- 12.4k
3
votes
Accepted
How to find the right size for user stories for a dev team
This sounds like your development team is not being allowed to sufficiently discuss the stories in the product backlog prior to moving them into the sprint or iteration backlog. The development team ...
- 351
3
votes
Does SDLC process can be applied to Kanban columns?
As Daniel has said - Kanban says "Start from where you are" - meaning, start with your current process, don't change anything. Simply visualize it and then gradually change it as the team identifies ...
- 2,115
3
votes
How to discover potential customer needs without prior market assumption
TL;DR
You can look at data and use inductive reasoning to formulate a hypothesis, or use deductive reasoning to define your product goals. Note that you must have a hypothesis or goal to test and ...
- 47.9k
2
votes
Accepted
Mapping value stream for a feature suggestion to working software process
You can likely answer your question by asking some questions.
Can a customer feature be created without this step?
If yes to 1, is there an internal need for this step to fulfill an internal process ...
- 12.4k
2
votes
If you already release continuously, what are the benefits of a Scrum Sprint of constant length?
The biggest reason for sticking to a consistent sprint length would be in order to have predictability. Since velocity is the average of the work you have accomplished in a given time period, it would ...
- 167
2
votes
In a data-driven startup, what should we *not* A/B test?
Since you are a data driven start-up, I think the criteria to decide wether you should do A/B testing should be data driven.
Avoid at all costs to rely solely on the time it takes to develop a change ...
- 1,103
2
votes
What should a lean/agile curriculum contain?
Because you are all new to Agile approaches, I recommend including the following (in addition to what you have already covered):
Intro to the Scrum Framework
Intro to the Kanban Method
Intro to a ...
2
votes
What should a lean/agile curriculum contain?
This is a really broad question and open to a lot of subjectivity, so I can provide what would be at the top of my list from a few years of teaching these topics to teams, but others may have ...
- 16.7k
2
votes
Lean Kanban without estimates or time logging
If you see little value from estimating project duration then don't bother with it.
However, there may be some value in measuring the time it takes for tasks to pass through the workflow. One of the ...
- 18.4k
2
votes
How to calculate ROI of a necessary feature to an existing sytem?
Calculating ROI for individual investments that don't provide additional benefit but only or mainly prevent loss isn't always meaningful. This becomes apparent if you look at possible combinations of ...
- 1,127
2
votes
How to calculate ROI of a necessary feature to an existing sytem?
The answer to your question will depend on how your organisation defines value.
Value isn't just about changes to revenue/profit. There are many forms of value, such as:
The cost associated with not ...
- 18.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible