Tools For Agile Blog

via Geek and Poke

Agile is Bloated

I realised this the other day when, on a mailing list, someone asked about what the “Sprint Goal” was supposed to be. A reply came from someone else that they didn’t have a goal, but since “scrum mandates a goal”, they decided that their goal was “to implement stories”. Of course, this is a rather meaningless way to have a sprint goal.

So that got me thinking: Have agile processes become so complicated that they confuse the hell out of most people?

Continue reading ‘It’s time to cut the agile crap’ »

The user story is one of the most fundamental bedrocks of agile processes. It is the unit that we divide the requirements into. It is the minimal unit of value. It is the unit that we work on at a time. It is the unit of deployment and it is the unit of measuring progress. And now, it seems that the time has come to retire the user story.

Continue reading ‘Is the concept of the user story dead?’ »

A lot of people doing agile want to use an agile tool for a vague notion of “tracking stuff”.

They assume

• That their execution will somehow be more “efficient” if a tool is used
• That by spending a little bit (or lot) of money, it can replace the time and hard work required to get agile to work
• That they can forget about process and do some other work

Well, if these are the reasons for using a tool, then I can confidently predict right now that your tool investment will fail.

There are many, many valid reasons to use a tool – where the tool can make a difference you could not do without it. But let’s be clear – all these reasons depend on your individual context, they do not universally apply for every team. Which is why you need to think carefully about your needs in a tool.

Continue reading ‘Do you really need an agile tool?’ »

Yesterday I gave 5 reasons why physical boards are better than electronic boards.

But could an electronic board be better than a physical board? Sure.

Here are five reasons why:

1. Collaborate with distributed teams: Lets face it. A large number of teams are globally distributed. Either the teams are split between locations, or there are multiple teams in different locations, or the management, stakeholders or customer is not co-located, or some team members sometimes work from home. Every which way, there are some people who need to know whats happening who aren’t going to be in the proximity of the physical board. Electronic boards are accessible from anywhere, giving remote teams and stakeholders the visibility needed to collaborate effectively.
2. Continue reading ’5 Reasons Why Electronic Boards Are Better Than Physical Boards’ »

People often ask whether it is better to use a physical board or an electronic board. The answer of course is that it depends. What is the context of the team and the project? How many team members? Are you distributed? and so on.

In this post, I’ll talk about five reasons why physical boards are better than electronic boards. Tomorrow, I’ll do the opposite, with five reasons why electronic boards are better than physical boards. Finally I’ll do a post on how to choose between the two.

Continue reading ’5 Reasons Why Physical Boards Are Better Than Electronic Boards’ »