Inspired by Daniel Vacanti's work on flow metrics and predictability, we turn to Little's Law, a fundamental equation from queuing theory. This principle establishes a clear relationship between the average number of work items within a system, their arrival rate, and the average time they spend in that system.

Looking to optimize your team's workflow? A gradual transition from Scrum to Kanban can yield significant benefits. Inspired by Corey Ladas's Scrumban framework, let's explore a three-phase approach to this transformation.

Agile is an umbrella term for several product development approaches sharing the principles and values described in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (known more commonly as the Agile Manifesto), officially introduced in 2001.

Before Agile, the Waterfall model, which is just one example of a broader class of plan-driven processes adapted from manufacturing, was considered the best practice for software development. In this blog I compare Agile, an approach based on flexibility and continuous improvement, with Waterfall, a linear and predictive paradigm.

In Agile environments, planning takes place at multiple levels. Formally Scrum defines only the Sprint Planning event and the “daily planning” which happens with the Daily Scrum. However, most organisations benefit from release planning which is a longer term planning.

I summarise in this post how I supported one of the previous companies I worked for to successfully scale Scrum and overcome the challenges we faced while growing the size of the delivery team. The increasing number of teams brought significant challenges and I will describe how each of those challenges were addressed.

Shu Ha Ri is a Japanese martial art concept that is used to describe the progression of training or learning. It is roughly translated to “first learn, then detach, and finally, transcend.” I want to present this concept applied to Scrum teams and use it as a tool to help teams to identify in which stage they are.

There was a time when “scrum” was only a rugby football term. A scrum (short for scrummage) is a method of restarting play in rugby football and involves eight players from each team tightly huddling as they compete to win the possession of the ball. This form of collaboration inspired the Scrum method in business.

When teams estimate well, they can do it quickly and accurately. Moreover, the organisation can comfortably base decisions on those estimates. For this to happen it is important to avoid teams getting stuck in the pursuit of perfect estimates as this can damage relations with stakeholders and compromise quality.

We often consider Lean and Agile to be two different philosophies. However, if we take the principles of Lean to heart, we end up creating an Agile team as well. In fact, many advanced Agile coaches now use ideas and vocabulary from Lean when teaching teams.

As the legendary engineer W. Edwards Deming wrote “without data, you’re just another person with an opinion”, on a project where no data of any kind is tracked, it is hard to tell whether you are on track for release and it is tough to optimize something you don’t measure. So I think it’s time to get into metrics I find useful for agile teams.

The sprint planning usually starts with the Product Owner describing the highest priority features to the team. Then, the Developers and the Product Owner adjust the discussed scope of the upcoming Sprint to the available capacity, but that is not always easy. Here are 9 common anti-patterns that emerge in practice.

A new version of the Scrum Guide was released on 18th November 2020. During the presentation of the new update, the authors said: “Scrum hasn’t changed, we just found a better way to describe it”. Let's have a look at some of the most significant changes in the brand new edition of the Scrum Guide 2020.

Suppose on one day you need to introduce a new team to the agile mindset and suppose managers will participate too. Do not start it by giving a standard presentation with slides about agile values and principles, self-organizing teams and so on, use a game instead! More precisely, use a physical agile game: the Ball Point Game.

The Team Estimation Game is a very powerful agile estimation technique that establishes relative sizing using story points. This technique is faster than the well-known Planning Poker, has the same accuracy and is fun.

It is true that many teams struggle to split large User Stories into smaller stories in a useful way, but, fortunately, story splitting is a skill that can be learned in a relatively short time. There are now several techniques and tools that can be used to spit User Stories. I would like to introduce you to the simple and fast SPIDR method from Mike Cohn.

There are several great retrospective techniques in the Agile community, the one we will see today is called Sailboat Retrospective as it uses a sailboat as a metaphor for the team. The idea is that the team is on a sailboat, heading towards their goal while dealing with winds and rocks along the way.

Most people think that games and business work doesn’t seem like a natural pairing, I think instead games are serious instruments to explain key principles in an interactive way.
Playing games for learning is especially helpful for concepts which can be easily misunderstood because they are different from existing ways of working.

The stand-up could be the only time in the day when the whole team is assembled with the product owner, therefore it is the perfect opportunity to review progress and set goals for the day.