Daily Scrum Cheat Sheet
Daily Scrum Meeting Purpose The goal of the Daily Scrum meeting is to synchronize and plan the team’s work toward the Sprint Goal over the next day (until the next Daily Scrum) meeting. Attendees Delivery Team ScrumMaster (Owner) Product Owner (Optional, but preferred) Stakeholders (Optional) Agenda Make sure that the team starts on time. The […]
Sprint Planning Cheat Sheet
Purpose The Sprint Planning meeting is a two-part meeting where the team commits to a sprint goal for the next two-week sprint with a complete sprint backlog of prioritized product requests, their tasks, and sizes. The first part of the meeting is when the Product Owner presents the highest priority stories from the Product Backlog […]
Retrospective Cheat Sheet
Retrospective Purpose The Retrospective is held at the end of each sprint in order to evaluate the previous sprint and discuss what worked well and what areas the team could improve upon. The team should identify one or two areas to work on in the next sprint. Attendees Delivery Team ScrumMaster (Owner) Product Owner Agenda […]
Agile in Highly Regulated Environments
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; “Working software over comprehensive documentation; “Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; “Responding to change over following a plan.” For those of us in the Agile community, the Agile Manifesto is a wonderful expression of the True North of Agile software development – empowered teams, swarming to solve customer […]
How to Overcome Three Myths of Agile With Real Practices
Myths teach us concepts through a narrative. For example, before we had scientific proof that the earth’s rotation caused our sunrises and sunsets, ancient civilizations believed the sun rose and fell because it was driven across the sky on a chariot. Myths help explain things we don’t understand, which is why it’s not surprising that Agile […]
Order Up! Agile and Lean Lessons From The Restaurant Industry
Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash Three weeks ago. It’s Friday night. We’re in a lazy mood so we hop in the car and go to the new neighborhood pizza place, Aviator Pizza. It’s our second time to go and it’s even busier than the first time, which is a good sign. The burger joint […]
8 Roles Agile Coaches Play
Vince Lombardi. Phil Jackson. Kathryn Smith. These are some of the greatest Coaches in the history of sports. But what does being a Coach really mean? While they are experts of the game at hand, chances are, being an SME is only 50% of what a Coach does or is. A great athletic Coach takes […]
The News Cycle, Breakpoints, And Agile Coaching Opportunities
During the first session of the Professional Coaching Course with New Ventures West, we discussed the idea that we as people live within our own self-sealed and self-reinforcing narrative. Within that narrative, our interactions with the world around us are interpreted and, through that interpretation, used to reinforce the strength of our narrative. Similar to […]
Agile Team Coaches: What Do They Even Do?
Agile coaches are subject matter experts in Agile principles and practices and they apply their knowledge towards guiding struggling individuals, teams, and organizations. They are called when teams and organizations begin their Agile transformation, or if they when teams start and see realize that the road to high-performance may be rockier than expected. In both […]
Technical Skills And The Product Owner
Product Owners are in high demand. Searching on Indeed for “Product Owner” pulled up 103 new jobs posted this month. While its existence is relatively new compared to a Product Manager, it’s gaining attention as Agile and Scrum begin to overtake traditional methods of building software and managing creating projects. The Product Owner (PO) is […]