Carsten Lützen created a lot of introduction videos that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDvr4dS873jCpYDCEtBBW8g/videos
Some exampels of these video’s are:
How to Work with Complex User Stories That Cannot Be Split
Most user stories can be split. It may be hard to find a good way to split some stories, but most can be split. These are known as compound stories—stories that are made up of multiple smaller stories.
There is another type of story: the complex story. Complex stories are ones that cannot be split. They are inherently large or complex and there are no subparts to be pulled into separate stories.
Even with a complex story, you don’t want to let the story linger open for three, four or more sprints. Doing so
- Makes velocity less predictable from sprint to sprint
- Increases the risk of a developer going astray from user expectations , and
- Allows the team to develop the bad habit of leaving work incomplete at the end of an iteration
Use Progress Points to Identify Accomplishments
Read about it in this article: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-to-work-with-complex-user-stories-that-cannot-be-split
Road to PSMIII
Sjoerd Nijland has written a nice series of blogposts about his road to PSMIII:
Definition of Scrum
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/definition-of-scrum-2d1f224256c
Empiricism: Transparency
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/empiricism-transparency-33adad8fbba2
Empiricism: Inspection, Part One
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/empiricism-inspection-part-one-cc4cd8bf98a8
Empiricism: Inspection, Part Two
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/empiricism-inspection-part-two-fafb785bd0c0
Empiricism: Adaptation
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/empiricism-adaptation-975f044a09b2
Scrum Values
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/scrum-values-1203813e0220
The Scrum Team
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-scrum-team-75b8004a4bc2
The Scrum Master
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-scrum-master-729e223f4b64
The Scrum Master’s responsibilities
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-scrum-masters-responsibilities-7ee05cae707e
The Product Owner
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-product-owner-6b7a63fef8fe
The Development Team
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-development-team-575d69054a9b
The Sprint
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-sprint-40d0ccc895f9
Sprint Cancellation
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/sprint-cancellation-c9a9c66e8c99
Scrum’s Artifacts
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/scrums-artifacts-6f07abfab11
The Product Backlog
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-product-backlog-7aec7daf844f
Estimation
https://medium.com/serious-scrum/estimation-103de626551e
Story Points Are Still About Effort
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
Three reasons to stop talking about time and deadlines in Agile environments
Timelines and deadlines have always been tricky for software development. With the advent of Agile software development and Scrum, the may feel even trickier. In this post, Ziryan Salayi explores how you can move the conversation from time and deadlines to something that matters: delivering value to your customers faster.
Read the complete article here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/timelines-and-deadlines-how-to-handle-them-in-an-agile-environment-79f5946072ee
Patterns for Splitting User Stories
Good user stories follow Bill Wake’s INVEST model. They’re Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. The small requirement drives us to split large stories. But the stories after splitting still have to follow the model.
Read the complete article here: https://agileforall.com/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/
Why Agile Teams Should Estimate at Two Different Levels
It is very common for agile teams, especially Scrum teams, to estimate both their product backlog and sprint backlogs. In this article, Mike Cohn will address:
- Why estimating both the product backlog and sprint backlog can be useful even though it seems redundant
- Why teams should estimate the two backlogs in different units
- When teams should estimate
- Whether all teams should estimate
Although I think you should not try to use hours for estimation, I agree using different valuations for an estimation is best. I find using T-shirt sizes for PBIs and Story Points for SBIs work well.
Read the complete article here, and also take note of some excellent comments at the bottom: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-agile-teams-should-estimate-at-two-different-levels
Nine Questions Scrum Masters and Product Owners Should Be Asking
In the following article Mike Cohn shares his favorite questions to ask: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/nine-questions-scrum-masters-and-product-owners-should-be-asking
Two Questions about Estimates
- I’m not looking for an estimate. But if I asked for an estimate, what unit pops into your minds: Hours, days, weeks, months, or years?
- How confident are you in that estimate?
Three Questions About Team Decisions
- What are three other options you considered before making this decisions?
- What’s the worst thing that could happen if we pursue this direction?
- What has to go right for this to be the best decision?
Two Questions about Meetings
- Do we need everyone who is here now?
- Should anyone else be here?
One Question to Ask When Wandering Around
- Does anyone else need to know about this?
One Question to Ask During Daily Standups
- What do you know that I don’t know?
The Agile response to “How much will it cost, and when will it be done?”
Reading time: 3 minutes
The right answer to the question about scope, budget, and deadline is not to go along with the line of thinking that’s behind it. Instead, offer management a better way to manage the risks of a project. Offer them a visible and transparent process like Scrum that allows for frequent change and makes the progress of teams visible on a transparent backlog. Scrum will not magically make your project succeed, nor will it prevent mistakes and failures, but it will make them less costly because you can detect them more frequently as part of the iterative nature.
Read the complete article here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/the-agile-response-to-how-much-will-it-cost-and-when-will-it-be-done-86d907573871