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What’s your Definition of Done (DoD)?
In software, there’s nothing closer to a magical, silver bullet than a written Definition of Done (DoD). A Definition of Done is typically created by each team and it describes all the items that have to be completed in order to call something Done. Why do you need a DoD? Well, have you ever had…
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New “Scrum Master Skills” Course at Pluralsight
My new Scrum Master Skills course just went live on Pluralsight! Here’s the course description: The Scrum Master role in an organization can be difficult. You live between a rock and a hard place. You’re influential but you probably don’t have any real power. You’re not a project manager but you’re still kind of on the…
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Slides: “Coaching Skills for Scrum Masters & The Self-Organizing Team” from ALM Chicago
I just wrapped up speaking at ALM Chicago 2015. (Had a great time, BTW.) As promised, here are my slides from my talk. Coaching Skills for Scrum Masters & The Self-Organizing Team Scrum works best with — arguably, requires — a self-organizing team. If you want a high-performing and self-organizing team, it helps if your…
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Zen & the Art of the Scrum Timebox
Everything that happens in Scrum happens within a ‘timebox’. There’s the 30 day (or less) overall Sprint and then there are timeboxes for the events within a Sprint. There’s 8 hours (or less) for the Sprint Planning Meeting. The Daily Scrum gets 15 minutes. Then 4 hours (or less) for the Sprint Review followed by…
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4 Ways to Fail at Scrum Planning Poker
If you’re doing Scrum, chances are high that you use or at least have heard of Planning Poker. (By my estimates, I’d say that somewhere between 0 and 100% of teams use it.) It’s a simple and effective way to do software estimation that’s easy to understand and implement. Considering how simple it is, you’d…
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A Quick Guide to Choosing Your Scrum Sprint Length
If your team is using Scrum to organize their work and deliver done, working software, you’ll be working in Sprints. A Sprint is the time you have to do your work. A Scrum Sprint goes like this: 1) at the start of the sprint you plan what you’re going to do and how, 2) go…
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5 Reasons Your Daily Scrum is Boring
When you ask someone “what’s Scrum?”, probably 9 times out of 10 they’ll start telling you about the Daily Scrum meeting. Maybe they call it the “standup” or the “daily” or the “daily standup” but they’re talking about that meeting that you’re supposed to have every day if you’re doing Scrum. Oh…and they almost invariably say…
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Branching, Work In Progress, & Employee Retention
I did a coaching and training session with a company recently. They’re a small, early-stage company in the Greater Boston-area. I got a call from the owner (let’s call him Mike) looking for help solving their problems with Team Foundation Server version control. Mike was complained that they were regularly “losing changes containing days worth…
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Is it really such a bad idea to change your Sprint length?
“Is it really such a bad idea to change your Sprint length?” I get this question all the time especially from teams and organizations that are new to Scrum. The answer is a slam dunk: YES. Yes, it is indeed a horrible idea to change your sprint length. When I’m talking about changing your sprint…
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Why are there timeboxes in Scrum? Why operate in a series of Sprints?
If you’re “doing Scrum” and “being Agile”, what’s the purpose of these things called Sprints? You might be thinking “Sure…timeboxes. That’s why. Scrum operates in a series a timeboxes.” Right. Scrum operates within a handful of timeboxes and assuming a 30 day sprint, then they are as follows: Event Timebox Duration Sprint 30 days Sprint…