I’ve focused the past few posts on how we dealt with a major obstacle this sprint, writing about how Agile processes helped us both to catch the problem and to address it successfully. We’ve reworked our approach to the feature set and are now back to making good progress on development. But this issue isn’t… Continue reading Focus behind the scenes
I wrote yesterday about the problem we crashed into this sprint when we discovered that designs for one major feature we were building had failed to consider two important user personas, had worked off of an inadequately articulated user story, and had been conceptualized by one team while being built by a slightly different one. … Continue reading Mid-course correction – addressing an issue
One of the core principles of Agile is this: “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.” The ability to respond nimbly to new information is a hallmark of Agile (in my opinion) and part of what makes it such a good approach to use when developing… Continue reading Mid-course correction – finding an issue
Do you remember the game ‘telephone’ that you might have played as a kid? Someone starts with a message that they whisper into the ear of the person next to them, then that person whispers as much as they can remember of that same message to the next person in line, and so on until… Continue reading A global team
Yesterday I met with our senior designer, our lead developer, and our product manager to discuss the design and functionality of a feature we plan to build out later this quarter. Our current sprint has barely started and already we are talking about what we plan to work on in the coming weeks and months. … Continue reading Already planning next sprint
Every day in our two-week sprint we start the day with a 15-minute scrum meeting in which all of the team members working on the sprint discuss our daily progress. I’ve been working with a fairly consistent team for close to two years and one question that sometimes comes up is who leads the team.… Continue reading Who leads the scrum team?
In my current firm we’ve been working with Agile for over six years. Our process has evolved as has our understanding of Agile methodologies. We started with six-week sprints, shortened them to two weeks, and are now talking about a move first to one-week sprints and then perhaps to continuous deployment (not to be confused… Continue reading A sprint in the life: Begin with the end in mind
In my past two blog posts I have mentioned the Agile Manifesto and my intention to share some reflections on this important statement of the values behind an Agile development methodology. As I hone my plans for the next mini-arc of blog posts I want to write – about ‘a scrum in the life’ of… Continue reading Reflections on the Agile Manifesto
Any of you who grew up in the Eighties or who enjoy pop culture references from that era will remember Marty McFly. A slightly dorky teenager who is friends with a zany scientist named Doc, Marty gets sent back to 1955 in a DeLorean time machine where he interacts with his future parents. The trilogy… Continue reading Time travel the Agile way
As I launch into this new series I’m calling Agility, I had planned to begin with one or two ‘big picture’ postings about the Agile Manifesto and core principles. I still plan to write these posts soon, but if you follow me on Twitter (@asbiv) you might have noticed that an issue came up at… Continue reading Balancing Act: Who decides when new features are ready?
InTruthItsNotThatSimple 