Discussion
American football teams trailing late in games often rely on a clock-management strategy known as the two-minute drill. They run hurry-up, no-huddle offenses and execute plays that involve running out of bounds (thereby stopping the clock) whenever possible. While working the ball downfield, time can become more formidable than the opposing defense. Like the scenario…
Selecting appropriate Scrum Master(s) and identifying relevant Stakeholder(s) is crucial to the success of any project. In some projects, there may have been pre-conditions stipulating certain team members and their roles. When there is flexibility in choosing the Scrum Master(s), the following are important Selection Criteria: Problem-solving skills—This is one of the primary criteria to…
The Product Owner represents the interests of the stakeholder community to the Scrum Team. The Product Owner is responsible for ensuring clear communication of product or service functionality requirements to the Scrum Team, defining Acceptance Criteria, and ensuring those criteria are met. In other words, the Product Owner is responsible for ensuring that the…
Once the Scrum Team has selected User Stories for a given Sprint, they should then consider any dependencies, including those related to the availability of people as well as any technical dependencies. Properly documenting dependencies helps the Scrum Teams determine the relative order in which Tasks should be executed to create the Sprint Deliverables. Dependencies…
In a Scrum project, every sprint begins with Sprint Planning Meeting. The main objective should only be planning the sprint. Ensure that the meeting is attended by the all team members including the Product Owner, Scrum Master and the Scrum Team. You can also include part time resources for this meeting. This provides an important…
Business justification is first assessed prior to a project being initiated and is continuously verified throughout the project lifecycle. This is a very important step in Scrum methodology. The project should make business sense in each and every part of its lifecycle. Estimation of the project value is a major way of establishing business justification.…
If you have heard of Agile, then you have probably also heard of DSDM, or Dynamic System Development Method. These project management methodologies have a lot in common. But what is DSDM? To answer this question, we will need to talk about birds. I know that may sound silly, but I promise I am not…
Agile process tools such as Scrum, Lean Kanban, Extreme Programming XP and others bring their own characteristics and advantages to the table. For example, Kanban focuses on improving whichever methodology is being used rather than providing its own framework, while Scrum provides a definite framework with essential artifacts. The focus of the Agile method is…
Scrum and Kanban are the offspring of the agile methodology. The two methods may have different approaches, but are both rooted in the agile philosophy of software development. Scrum is useful in projects in which there will be periodic releases and Kanban comes handy in projects in which there will be frequent releases. Scrum is…
A step-by-step transition to Agile presents several advantages over diving in head-first. When Agile is adopted slowly and carefully, teams will be able to see the incremental progress from which they are able to learn and gain Agile experience. Teams will need to develop a shared vision for the project and a collective definition for…
