If you use Scrum or any other iteration-based approach to your work, the team plans in batches for that next iteration. The iteration is a timebox. The batch is the amount of work the team thinks they can do in that timebox. If the batch is sufficiently small and your cycle time is sufficiently short, […]
Several of my clients are trying to do the impossible right now—plan their portfolio for an entire year. Or plan their product backlogs for eighteen months or longer. When I ask them how well that’s worked for them in the past, they often say, “Our planning works great. Our execution? Not so well.” That’s my
For years, we’ve used several metaphors to describe software product development: People-based metaphors, such as: Man-weeks for all the humans working on a project or a product. FTE for full-time Equivalent (as in human beings!) “Resources” instead of the words: people, or human beings Construction metaphors, such as: build, which describes how we organize and
Several people on LinkedIn commented on my post, Want Better and Faster Results? Increase Team Size and Reduce WIP. They wondered if adding more people to a small team would violate Brooks’ Law. As with all good questions, the answer is “It depends.” It depends on how your lifecycle manages feedback loops and learning, how
For years, I’ve advocated relatively small teams. Why? Small teams can more easily learn—faster and together. All because they have fewer communication paths. I was only partially right. Smaller teams tend to have lower WIP (Work in Progress). Even if a 5 to 7-person team falls into the Everyone Starts Their Own Story trap (see
I started this series with many specific concerns about a particular interview question: “The product owner and dev team cannot decide on a sprint goal, even after hours of discussion. They (the team) feel that the tasks for the sprint are too varied to manage to a single sprint goal. What should the Scrum Master
If you’re trying to use an agile approach, what do you care about in terms of finishing: That the team finish the work, regardless of the personal or team cost? That you know who did what, so you can reward them? Or that the team completed the work, without undue stress and strain? (also called
Every minute, it seems as if someone is talking about how great ChatGPT is. It’s going to revolutionize the world! I agree— I am sure AI will revolutionize the world. At some point. But I think it’s going to remove all those busy-work jobs, not the jobs where we, as humans, offer value. Here’s a
I wrote about general meeting problems in Recognize the Problems That Prevent Effective Meetings (Collocated, Remote, Hybrid). But “hybrid” teams have much worse meeting problems. During the pandemic, most of us understood how to create nebula team meetings that worked. (Dispersed teams are nebula teams. See How To Understand Your Team Type: Collocated, Satellite, Cluster, Nebula for
Work Solo or Collaborate? How to Choose Based on What Benefits You Do you prefer collaborative or solo work? Some of us prefer to work alone because we know how to be effective, even if our work is not independent of everyone else’s work. Or, if we work as part of a workgroup, such as