How Do You Capture Your User Stories and Product Ideas? Try Index Cards Here’s an out of the box idea that at first glance might seem counter-intuitive. I believe that user stories and product ideas should be born on index cards, rather than immediately logged electronically. Most Agile or scrum teams will use some kind […]
Safety Checks to Kick Off Your Meetings We often assume that participants in teams feel comfortable being open, transparent and forthcoming in a way that will make meetings and interactions meaningful and valuable. But what if this assumption is wrong? How would we know? How might this affect a meeting, it’s participants and the meeting […]
Process management tools are a common way to for a team to manage its work, it’s backlog, and its plans. But these are repositories of information, they are not likely the best way to create this information. Here’s an idea that might make work better. Most agile scrum teams will use some kind of digital […]
Get rid of the ‘Survey 7’ to Level-Up the Way You Get Feedback Surveys can be a really effective tool when collecting feedback or gaining insights from different stakeholders. Their versatility allows them to be used to get feedback from users and customers as well as to get ideas for improvements from team members. Surveys […]
Add Expiration Dates to Your Backlog Items If you have a backlog that’s getting out of control, consider using expiration dates to help control the list and streamline your team’s priorities. Many mature agile teams or scrum teams that have been together for a while might find themselves with a backlog that’s hundreds if not […]
Use Working Agreements for your Daily Scrum Have you ever considered that working agreements for your daily scrum might make them a lot more valuable, and help separate the daily scrum from any other meetings you have each day? Your team’s daily scrum or daily stand up might be one of the most important meetings […]
A Wishlist of Ready! Many Agile and Scrum teams have adopted the practice of having a “Definition of Ready” as a way to explicitly define when a Story – or Backlog Item – is “Ready” for a team to take into a Sprint. This often serves as an entrance gate for Stories and ideas to […]
Explicit Sprint Learning Goals On this edition of Agile Quick Tips, we’re going to be discussing how setting explicit sprint learning goals could help improve your team overall. Agile teams or scrum teams will often set goals during sprint planning that help them to maximize value and optimize the product that sprint. But what if […]
Achievement Focused Daily Scrum If you’re feeling like your daily Scrum or Stand-up is getting less valuable, and losing some of its effectiveness, why not turn things around by changing the focus to achievements rather than activities? Most Agile team’s Stand-ups or Scrums focus pretty heavily on activities. Questions asked in the daily Scrum include […]
The Open Meeting Parking Lot Meetings getting off track? Have you thought about using the idea of an Open Meeting Parking Lot to make an entire meeting more focused? Many Agile teams complain about meetings that get derailed. This can be anything from a daily Scrum that takes much longer than ideal because everyone has […]