The Cone of Uncertainty in Scrum
Uncertainty in the Product Backlog is a big risk for the schedule of a Scrum project. How clever your estimations might be, you have to consider them using the notion of “cone of uncertainty”.
product backlog
Agile Scrum product backlog grooming and management by the product owner and the Scrum team: user stories, epics, sprint planning, etc.
Why Estimating is Not Part of Scrum
If estimating is a core activity of traditional project management, Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová explains to us in this article that it is not used by advanced Agile and Scrum teams. Instead, the focus should be on being more reactive to changes and responsive to feedback. We are realizing that Agile is not about plans, but planning as a continuous activity.
5 Tips to Improve Product Backlog Refinement
The Product Backlog Refinement (PBR) activity is one that many new Scrum teams struggle with. Insufficient PBR often results in long sprint planning meetings and incomplete backlog items at the end of the sprint. This article provides some tips on how to improve backlog refinement, which in the past was called backlog grooming.
Build a Powerful Roadmap
This video will provide you with practical techniques on how to build a powerful roadmap for your product or service, one that allows any Agile organization to get valuable feedback from their customers and deliver business value.
Why Splitting Unfinished Product Backlog Items is a Bad Idea
In an ideal Agile world, the Scrum team is always completing all the selected user stories at the end of the sprint. In the real world however, there might be some product backlog items that don’t have a “done” status, but are only partially finished. Should you split them for the next sprint? In this article, Daniel Zacharias gives you four reasons why it is a bad idea to split unfinished product backlog items.
Storytelling: the Big Picture for Agile Efforts
Agile reminds us that the focus of any set of requirements needs to be on an outcome rather than a collection of whats and whos. Storytelling is a powerful tool to elevate even the most diehard requirements analyst from a discussion of individual requirements to a discussion of outcomes. Outcomes are the big picture that acts as an anchor for whole efforts and which is continuously broken down into more and more detailed product backlogs.
Agile Requirements: a Definition of Ready Checklist
We all know the “Definition of Done” used in Scrum for items that should be potentially shippable to the customer at the end of the sprint. In his book Essential Scrum, Kenneth Rubin discusses the “Definition of Ready” that applies to product backlog items that should be ready to be developed before the start of the sprint.