In the past, the Scrum Guide consistently used the word “priority” for the Product Backlog or noted that the Product Backlog was “prioritized.” While the Product Backlog must be ordered, prioritization is only one technique and rarely a good one to achieve this objective. The new Scrum Guide instead uses the term ordered for the Product Backlog.
Implementing Scrum on a custom (or bespoke) software development project can be difficult and many organizations new to the agile methodology struggle to adopt it. Typical issues/obstacles that arise include lack of business ownership and the inability to make decisions, limited business buy-in into the concept of Agile or team communication and individual skills. When introducing Agile, organizations often attempt to tackle all of these issues head on and get overwhelmed with the new methodology, then choosing to revert back to what they are familiar with. Why not moving gradually to Scrum, enabling an organization to deal with issues one at a time and gain the benefits associated with solving each issue gradually?
This article provides an overview on the derivation and application of user stories, which are the primary concept that represent the user requirements in agile software development approaches like Scrum. Its goal is to describe the user story in detail, because it contains the key agile practices that help align solutions directly to the user’s specific needs, assuring quality at the same time.
In this blog post, Ken Pugh compares the usage of Kanban board and Scrum tracking boards to track progress of agile projects. He concludes that Scrum-style boards and Kanban-style boards can provide the same information, but in different ways.
This video discusses of Big Visible Charts (also named BVCs or Information Radiators) as a practice to improve the status visibility of agile projects.
A team of volunteers put together this video to highlight the less desirable behaviors that can sometimes make their way into a daily Scrum Stand-up meeting.
This article suggests that it would be wise to think, very candidly, whether Agile is really something that your company can achieve. The less transparency is tolerated in a company, the less traction Agile will get. Another key prerequisite for being Agile is having the ability to have adult conversations.
Scrum Expert Copyright © 2009-2024 Martinig & Associates