Blog

Metrics have always been a key element of any project management method. As the industry adoption of Agile principles increased, the metrics themselves and the approach toward them also began to undergo a change. Now in Agile projects, velocity is often looked at as the measure of a team’s progress and hence the most significant or only way to measure productivity. This write-up attempts to explain the reasons why this can go wrong and what some alternatives are to bridge the gap.

After experiencing my fair share of frustrating Sprint Review moments, I want to share some tips to improve the feedback you receive.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. - John Q. Adams

In the last 10 years I have helped a number of organizations to implement Scrum. For a lot of these organizations the Scrum implementation either takes a long time or they never reach the real benefits of Scrum (happy stakeholders & maximum valued products with high quality). There is a close relation between the speed & succes of the Scrum implementation and the maturity of the Scrum Master role.

Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success. - Henry Ford

Here are some tips I’ve found useful for writing an effective user story.

If you've ever wondered what a spillover is, it's a backlog item that doesn't meet the Definition of Done (DoD). If you are a Scrum Team member, product owner, or a stakeholder, spillovers might trouble you in sprint planning meetings. When this happens, you will spend a lot of time discussing the details and planning for these unfinished stories.

How will the role of the Manager change in an Agile organization? This is a question that keeps every Manager busy when they start their Agile journey. In this blog I describe the pattern of a changing management style. The behaviour is based on my observations when coaching the Agile Manager.

I have been working in an Agile environment for the past nine years. The one question managers keep asking is, "What is my role after my teams have adopted Agile?" Having worked as a manager, I can say that this is the one question no one could answer satisfactorily.

I work with a lot of companies that are learning to use Scrum as a tool for agility driver. Recently, I spotted a trend: if a Scrum Team cannot articulate their Sprint Goal, the problem quite often lies with the Product Backlog. As a rule, it looks a lot like my favourite mixed salad (or, frankly speaking, a mess). It's not easy to make sense out of this mix.