Twelve Principles of Agile Software

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to [...]

Scrum Sprint Zero

So your organization has decided to implement Scrum, but you’re stuck, wondering what to do first. That is understandable. For all of Scrum’s detailed processes, what is the process for starting the process? Let me put it in another way, how does a team prepare for its first sprint? For many Scrum professionals, the answer [...]

Scrum Epics

In Scrum, the teams that complete the work assign effort estimates to every user story. Of course, that assumes that a team can reach a consensus for an appropriate estimate. What happens when a story includes too many unknowns to tell just how big it is? Or what if the story’s requirements are known, but [...]

Agile Software Development and Cowboy Coding – The difference

Cowboy coding is a pejorative term used to describe software development where the developers have autonomy over the development process. This includes control of the project’s schedule, algorithms, tools, and coding style. A cowboy coder can be a lone developer or part of a group of developers with either no external management or management that [...]

Scrum Impediments

In Scrum, an impediment is anything that keeps a team from being productive. An impediment can literally be anything, from a team member who is slacking to a freezing team room. But if it’s blocking the team from performing to the best of its abilities, it’s an impediment. To help maximize efficiency, the role of [...]

The Scrum Backlog

In Scrum, the product backlog is the single most important artifact. The product backlog is, in essence, an incredibly detailed analysis document, which outlines every requirement for a system, project, or product. In simpler terms, it could be described as a comprehensive to-do list, expressed in priority order based on the business value each piece [...]

Scrum Sprint

In the Scrum method of agile software development, work is confined to a regular, repeatable work cycle, known as a sprint or iteration. In by-the-book Scrum, a sprint is 30 days long, but many teams prefer shorter sprints, such as one-week, two-week, or three-week sprints. But how long each sprint lasts is something for the [...]

The Scrum Team Role

There are three fundamental roles in the Scrum method of agile software development: the Product Owner, the ScrumMaster, and the Team. In my last two articles, I discussed the roles and responsibilities of the Product Owner and the ScrumMaster. Now I’ll discuss the team and its function in Scrum. In Scrum, an ideal team would [...]

The ScrumMaster Role

There are three fundamental roles in the Scrum method of agile software development: the Product Owner, the ScrumMaster, and the Team. The second role I’d like to examine is the ScrumMaster, who serves as a facilitator for both the Product Owner and the team. He or she has no management authority and may never commit [...]

Scrum Product Owner

There are three fundamental roles in the Scrum method of agile software development: the Product Owner, the ScrumMaster, and the Team. I’ll begin by discussing the Product Owner because it is the most demanding of the roles. In Scrum, the Product Owner is the one person responsible for a project’s success. The Product Owner leads [...]

SCRUM

ABOUT Scrum is an iterative incremental process of software development commonly used with agile software development. Despite the fact that “Scrum” is not an acronym, some companies implementing the process have been known to adhere to an all capital letter expression of the word, i.e. SCRUM. This may be due to one of Ken Schwaber’s [...]