Agile – Mike Kuphal's Thoughts

When everything is urgent, nothing is truly urgent!

Don’t let urgent asks drown out the most important work Constant Urgency Hampers Efficiency–> The modern digital workspace often feels like everything is a top priority, leading to loss of focus and genuine urgency. The Emotional Side of Urgency–> Often, the label of “urgent” is more about seeking attention than actual importance. Introducing the Important/Urgent … Continue reading

Red Pill / Blue Pill Scrum

Recently, a colleague sent me a link to a Agile Finland Seminar; Jim Coplien: Ten things that Scrum teams almost always do wrong . The talk is about 2 hours long, stuffed with excellent information, even if Coplien’s presentation style is a bit more laid back than I prefer. In it, he references that he … Continue reading

Agile Planning: Planning Session Timing

Once your team has decided to go forward with Group planning and estimating (and may have even decided to try Planning Poker as a estimation technique), often the next question is: “How much time should I expect a planning session to take?” Best Practice: Time box 1-2 hours of planning per week in Sprint … Continue reading

Agile Planning: Micro-manage… Yourself!

In my last post, I talked about the importance of tracking Remaining Work Hours instead of Completed Hours and some of the reasons why this can work for your team. Because of the relatively short nature of a Sprint (usually 2-4 weeks), one might think it’s not important to update the Remaining Work hours on … Continue reading

Agile Planning: Remaining Work Hours > Completed Work Hours

Teams I Scrum Master do not track completed hours. Remaining work hours are the ticket. That is where the real information is held. This is not an easy transition for the Project Manager in all of us. Even for the team members, many of whom have been asked to track completed work hours for years … Continue reading

Agile Planning: Have To See What You Plan

For both Sprint planning, and Product planning, teams I have been part of have found that being able to see (visually) the backlog is very important. If you are using good old fashion index cards/post-its to record your User Stories and tasks, or using a electronic tool to keep track of them (maybe you have … Continue reading

Agile Planning: What? How Do I Know What I Will Be Working On During The Sprint?

I have heard of many groups that will finish Sprint planning by taking all tasks committed to by the team for the sprint, and assigning them out to each team member. Teams I have been part of have tried this (especially the first few sprints when new to Agile planning) as it felt like the … Continue reading

Agile Planning: Group Estimate via Planning Poker

The best way teams I have been on have found to estimate via a group is Planning Poker. There are many benefits related to planning as a group (see my previous post on this topic for more). One thing that was difficult to grasp for me at first, is the idea of group estimating. Have … Continue reading

Agile Planning: My Top Five Tips on Decomposing User Stories Into Tasks

Decomposing a User Story involves taking the result your user is looking for (stated as a User Story) and breaking it down into a number of tasks that the team can work on individually. Here are five tips I have found to be very useful: 1) Decompose User Stories into tasks as a team Group … Continue reading

Agile Planning: ‘Ideal Day’ – User Story Estimation

I don’t like Story Point estimating. There I said it. I know many have had success with Story Point estimating, and the Scrum guru Mike Cohn advocates it in his books/etc. I have just found it to be too abstract, and difficult for developers (and myself) to grasp when starting out using Agile techniques. In … Continue reading