Yesterday’s Weather: Planning with Story Points
Yesterday's Weather is an Extreme Programming planning technique used to estimate the capacity of a Team based on their past performance. Yesterday's Weather is a guide to help Teams neither under commit nor overcommit to a set of Product Backlog items during Sprint Planning. It is based upon the old...
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Accelerated Learning Fundamentals
Accelerated Learning (AL) is a training approach that focuses on whole learner experience to maximize the learner's retention and application of what they have gathered during a training event. For people who are familiar with Training From the Back of the Room (TFBR), AL forms the foundation of TFBR since it creates the community space where the...
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Estimating the Size of Scrum User Stories
In Scrum, the owner of the estimates is very clear. Only the people who do the work, i.e., the Team, have the right to offer estimates for the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog items. However, like many things in Scrum, the framework leaves it up to each Team to decide...
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Thirteen Facilitation Tips for ScrumMasters & Product Owners
One of the many important skills for any Agile leader to master is the ability to facilitate a group's discussion. When the issue before the group is familiar, an Agile leader does not need to take an overly active part facilitating the group. However, when the issue is unfamiliar, or requires participants...
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Scrum Summary in Five Sentences
Alistair Cockburn has been sharing this distillation of Scrum in a recent talk called "Returning to the Heart of Agile". I really like the simplicity of this description since it recalls that Scrum is a simple framework. Deliver (or demo) each Sprint, with a preference for delivery. Management creates the...
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Yes…We Really Do Need a Full-time ScrumMaster
I live in the City of San Diego and we have an estimated 1.4 million people living within the city limits. Could you ever imagine someone asking the Mayor, or the City Council, "Do we really need so many fulltime fire fighters?" Yet, a variation of this topic comes up over-and-over again...
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