Scrum, The Good Bits: The Backlog

The sight of a Product Owner given pause for thought when they see a new feature that’s “absolutely crucial” pushing another “absolutely crucial” feature outside of the deadline is one of the most beautiful moments in software development…

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Categorized as Agile

Scrum, The Good Bits: Daily Standups

Daily standups are meant to be a communication tool – too often process can take the place of looking at the deeper reasons why we do things in Scrum.

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Categorized as Agile

Scrum, The Good Bits: An Introduction

Scrum is a business process, and like any business process, it sits between you and the work you need to get done. If it doesn’t help you get that work done more effectively it’s a big waste of time. Introduction to a series of articles discussing the best pieces of Scrum – the pieces you can steal and start using independently of a wider Scrum implementation.

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Categorized as Agile

Estimating like an Adult – What to Steal from Agile…

Somewhere along the way, Agile gained a bunch of fundamentally good ideas about fixing the estimation process. We’re going to look at what they are, why they’re important, and how to steal them for great profit.

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Categorized as Agile

How to Estimate like an Adult – A Developer’s Guide

Usefully estimating software projects is difficult, but not impossible. Developers can end up feeling guilty that they’re not meeting their estimates, and at the same time defensive: what they gave were just estimates after all, right? Managers feel exasperated that everything is taking three times as long as it should. What are the developers doing all day?

Agile Scrum: Delivering Broken Software Since 1991

Agile Scrum should be an absolute huge win for developers and managers alike. Too often though, when push comes to shove, it devolves in to a brutal machine for killing code quality and irritating developers. This article discusses the right way to fix that, and how activist developers can effect change.