Are you trying to use story points for estimation? If so, you might have encountered these problems: Story points reflect the ideal thinking of the team, not the actual experience of the team. Your managers don’t want story points—they want durations and dates. In the absence of sufficient information, everyone makes up fiction (human stories) […]
Do you have an overstuffed backlog the way Jenny did in Create More Success: How to Say No to “Everything” to Say Yes to What’s Necessary Now? I offered “now” advice in that newsletter. But what about the future? How can you prevent an overstuffed backlog, roadmap, or all those great ideas from interrupting your
Luke Pivac, a colleague from New Zealand, interviewed me last week. Here’s the video: We discussed several topics: My recent Unemployed Agilists posts. (That link just goes to the first post) My most recent book: Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. Luke very kindly included (automatically generated) subtitles, which
I started this series by discussing why managers didn’t perceive the value of agile coaches and Scrum Masters in Part 1, resulting in layoffs.) Then, in Part 2, I asked those unemployed agilists to review their functional skills, the skills people need to do a product development job well. While those skills are useful, they
If you’re an unemployed agilist, you are not alone. There way too many of you. But the causes and solutions might not be clear to you. That’s why Part 1 of this series discusses your value and what managers want and need. That part discusses why managers see agile coaches and Scrum Masters as staff
Susan, an experienced senior leader, wondered what to do. Her company’s market was on a roller coaster. Increased revenue meant a lot more customers, who clamored for more features. So, the product leaders pressured the teams to deliver faster. But she’d been in a roller coaster situation before. After two years of stupendous growth, revenue leveled off in just one
In Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1, I said that real agile approaches require cultural change to focus on flow efficiency, where we watch the flow of the work, not the people doing tasks. Too few organizations can do that. Then I offered three suggestions for teams in any lifecycle in Effective Agility: Three
In Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1, I said that real agile approaches require cultural change to focus on flow efficiency, where we focus on watching the work, not the people. Too few organizations can do that. But teams can change how they work—in any approach. Here are three suggestions to emulate flow efficiency
I continue to work with people who have trouble with their agile approach. They tell me their relative estimation isn’t working for them. They continue to roll over items, from sprint to sprint. They’ve rolled over some items for six months or longer. The people feel demoralized. And the Scrum Masters or agile project managers
I see many teams and team members who say, “Agile stinks. It’s a way to force me to work too fast and not finish anything.” When I ask people what’s happening, they say: We’re doing an agile death march because someone else already told us what we have to do and the date it’s due.