Scrum

Agile projects incorporate a number of techniques that are not easily transferable to traditional waterfall projects. One technique is the estimation of the size of user stories with abstract story points, and the use of story points to determine how much work can be completed in an iteration.

Distributed project teams are a reality of today’s business world, and the ability to enlist them while upholding Agile principles can bring great advantages as well as real challenges. Our 38-page report looks at those challenges but focuses on the benefits of working with distributed agile teams — and how to achieve them.

Retrospectives are a catalyst for continuous team improvement, providing a feedback loop to examine methods, teamwork and results. But holding monotonous retrospectives isn’t much better than holding none at all. Here are three techniques you can interchange for maximum effect.

On an agile project, the workload is determined at the beginning of each iteration. The Product Owner evaluates and prioritizes the work that needs to be done, while the team determines the amount of work they can complete. The iteration planning meeting sets the stage and should be run as a collaborative dialogue.

Why do organizations pursuing Agile transformation need a coach and how do they make it stick after the coach leaves? In this new series, we explore these and other questions, starting with Certified Scrum Coach and Trainer Xavier Quesada Allue.

At the release level, we approach the meaning of “done” more strategically by aligning User Stories with Epics and Vision Statements — all of which should be shared across the Scrum Team and all stakeholders so that they can see the building and not just the bricks. Here are some examples of what that looks like.

Managing uncertainty is one of the most important challenges facing project managers, but many have no consistent process for dealing with risks, large or small. One helpful step is to take a page from Agile practices and pay more attention to the size of team tasks and the quality of our conversations about them.