According to Mike Cohn story points are about time, read his complete explenation here: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/story-points-are-still-about-effort
Asking the right questions; how to help a Scrum Team switch from a technical to a functional Backlog
One of the biggest challenges for a Scrum Team is to switch from a technical to a functional perspective on their work. Christiaan Verwijs has developed a set of helpful questions that often trigger teams into a functional frame of mind.
- Why is it important that we implement this?
- What problem of stakeholders and/or end-users do we solve by doing this?
- What personas benefit from this, and why? (given that you have personas)
- How would sales explain the benefits of this to customers and/or users
- What reasons would an end-user have to want this?
- How would you explain this to a colleague who is not part of this project?
- How would you explain this to your spouse, at home, after a hard of work?
- What would you show during the review to demonstrate that this is working?
- If you are a user, how would you test if this works?
- What changes would a user notice after implementing this?
- What stakeholders benefit from this, and why?
- If we wouldn’t do this, what would end-users and or customers miss or be unable to do?
- What compliment would a happy user of customer give after delivering this?
- How would you explain this to a potential end-user?
- What steps would you go through in the application to test if this works?
- If we’d put this in release notes that will be read by end-users, how would we announce it?
Read the original article here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/asking-the-right-questions-how-to-help-a-scrum-team-switch-from-a-technical-to-a-functional-bee6c1598487
The Essence of Lean
The core idea of lean manufacturing is actually quite simple…relentlessly work on eliminating waste from the manufacturing process.
So, what is waste? It can take many forms, but the basic idea is to eliminate anything and everything that does not add value from the perspective of your customer.
Another way to look at lean manufacturing is as a collection of tips, tools, and techniques (i.e. best practices) that have been proven effective for driving waste out of the manufacturing process.
Seven Deadly Wastes
- Overproduction
- Waiting
- Transport
- Motion
- Overprocessing
- Inventory
- Defects
- Unused human potential*
Read the complete article here: https://www.leanproduction.com/intro-to-lean.html
Change Agent Map – Transforming the Agile Coaching Competency Framework
One of the most valuable tools has been the Agile Coaching Competency Framework [PDF], created by Michael Spayd and Lyssa Adkins.
Based on this, Jordann Gross created the Change Agent Map, read all about it here: http://agileety.com/change-agent-map
The Agile Board: 100 resources for agile teams
Irene Francés likes to share a board that she has been working on during the last couple of weeks. It is meant to capture the main agile resources she came across and found useful. https://loom.ly/7-gQgjs
A Day in the Life of a Scrum Master
In this blog post, Barry Overeem will share the most common question that gets asked during the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master courses. He’ll focus on the Scrum Master role and will provide an answer based on his personal experience as a Scrum Master. This for sure isn’t the ultimate answer, it’s how he has fulfilled or experienced the situation himself; https://medium.com/the-liberators/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-scrum-master-1f0c31bc07c5
Health checks for Teams and Leadership
In this blog post, Jimmy Janlén wants to share a powerful tool, the Leadership Health Check. It will help you become stronger as a management team and reveal improvement opportunities for how you, as a team of active servant leaders, better can enable the agile teams you support.
You can find the blog post here: https://blog.crisp.se/2019/03/11/jimmyjanlen/health-checks-for-teams-and-leadership
One Scrum Cheat Sheet to rule them all
Forsa-
The Reading List for Agile Newbies
Barry Overeem created a list of must-reads for agile newbies:
The Agile ManifestoThe Scrum Guide – Jeff Sutherland, Ken SchwaberThe Power of Scrum – Rini van SolingenScrum: A Pocket Guide – Gunther VerheyenSucceeding with Agile – Mike CohnThe Agile Samurai – Jonathan RasmussonThe Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick LencioniThe Scrum Field Guide – Mitch LaceyThe Phoenix Project – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George SpaffordKanban – David J. AndersonClean Code – Robert C. Martin
Read his complete blogpost here: http://www.barryovereem.com/the-reading-list-for-agile-newbies/
The Sprint Goal
In this article Jasper Alblas talks about the challenges of a Sprint Goal: https://medium.com/@jasperalblas/scrum-from-the-trenches-the-sprint-goal-e7e15203c82f