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Blog Articles
Viewing entries tagged with 'scrum'
Managing Commitments in an Agile Team
The past several articles have discussed the nature of Continuous Discovery and Dual-Track Agile. In this article I'd like to discuss another dimension of working effectively in an Agile environment, which is how we manage commitments.
Dual-Track Scrum
When I first start working with an Agile product team, one of the most common situations I find is where the teams have long and frustrating Sprint planning meetings because backlog items are poorly defined and not well understood; they have slow velocity as well as poor design because details are still being worked out during the Sprint; and the amount of waste and rework is very high because backlog items have not been validated.
Time-Boxing Product Discovery
In my last article I talked about one technique for applying Scrum concepts to product discovery – the opportunity backlog. In this article, I wanted to talk about another, which is to time-box product discovery.
Product Strategy in an Agile World
Recently I spoke with a team of very frustrated Scrum engineers. They were frustrated because they felt like all they were doing for the past year was chasing features and that the product manager really had no clue where they were heading or what they were really trying to accomplish. When I spoke to the product manager (product owner in Scrum lingo), he explained that he thought the whole idea of Agile methods like Scrum was to remain flexible and “agile” and that he didn’t think he was supposed to worry about or lock in a longer-term direction.
Product Management in an Agile Environment
Many software product teams are either currently experimenting with Agile methods, or have recently moved. I have written elsewhere about the benefits of Agile methods, including Scrum and XP, but I wanted to highlight here the keys for product management in an Agile environment.
The Origins of Agile
If your engineering team hasn’t already moved to some form of Agile methods (like Scrum or XP), then it’s likely they’re at least considering it. Agile really does attack some key problems that have plagued software teams for decades. But many product managers and designers, and to a lesser extent QA staff, are initially confused by Agile, unsure of their role in these methods. To be clear, these methods absolutely require these roles, but I attribute the confusion to the origin of Agile methods, and I’ve found that when I explain the origins, it helps to illuminate the problems that Agile was designed to solve, and what challenges remain.
Design vs. Implementation
NOTE: "Design" below refers to User Experience Design, and not Architectural or Systems Design.
Agile Development Processes
Many product development organizations have been experimenting with what has become known as “Agile Software Development” methods, the most popular of which is known as “Extreme Programming” (XP) but there are several others including Crystal, Adaptive, Scrum, and Pragmatic Programming.