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October 16, 2020 Tech Notes

VIDEO: Coaching Tips to Stop Teams Equating Points to Hours

This article is well-timed for our discussions around Agile and best practices. I hope you find it useful in how to handle equating points to hours. VIDEO: Coaching Tips to Stop Teams Equating Points to Hours Today’s post introduces the first installment in a free series of training videos to help teams use story points to create estimates. The training will be available until Wednesday, October 28, at 9 pm Pacific. To watch the first video and find out when the next video is available, sign up here. Over the next week, some new (and free) training videos will be released to tackle common problems teams face when estimating with story points. Earlier this year, a survey to discover what... Read more

October 16, 2020October 10, 2020 The Agile Manifesto

Scrum Team Anti-Patterns, What We All Need To Avoid

Our focus the last few episodes have been on anti-patterns relegated to a specific role. We take a step back in this episode and review scrum team anti-patterns. These are mistakes we make on a whole that can derail our project and reduce velocity. These can even drive a product into failure. Deliver The Wrong Thing There are many ways this anti-pattern can make an appearance. The story may be too vague, requirements gathering is insufficient, or the dev team misses the point of a feature—all of this boils down to a communication problem. Yes, we have once again come to a point where our problem and solution fall under the category of communication. This time the root cause is... Read more

October 14, 2020October 10, 2020 The Agile Manifesto

Common Scrum Master Anti-Patterns, Avoid These To Improve Velocity

We have talked about Scrum and Agile. However, some guidance helps us improve our odds or success. That is an essential part of becoming a better developer. In this episode, we look at scrum master anti-patterns and position the team for improvement and success. No Retrospective Everyone needs a plan to be productive in pursuit of a goal. Our goal of improving with each sprint will be impossible to achieve without assessing how we are doing. That is what a retrospective provides. When we skip the retro, we are embracing the worst of the scrum master anti-patterns. There are situations where we are pressed to skip over this “additional meeting.” However, it is a key factor in our improvement and... Read more

October 13, 2020October 5, 2020 Integrate Testing Into Your Development Flow

Regression Testing

Welcome to the final episode in our new series “Integrating testing into your development flow”. Today we are going to be looking at “Regression Testing”. In our last presentation we will be talking about User Acceptance Testing. What it is, when should we do it, who does it, and why is it so important? Today we will be talking about the last step in the test process Regression Testing. Specifically, what it is, when should we do it, who does it, and why is it so important? What Is Regression Testing Regression Testing is nothing but a full or partial selection of already executed test cases which are re-executed to ensure existing functionalities work fine. We do this type... Read more

October 12, 2020October 8, 2020 The Agile Manifesto

Agile Anti-Patterns of The Dev Team

Everything in software development has good and bad patterns. We have looked at why the agile approach is valuable. However, we need to review agile anti-patterns to avoid problems that can erase any benefits. There are many ways we can misuse this process. Here are some development team mistakes we can avoid No WIP Limit There is a pride people have around multi-tasking. However, it is not the most efficient way to get things done. Even worse, we can end up having too many tasks in flight when a sprint ends. This causes a broad range of challenges and can block a team from critical sprint tasks. We should take a task, complete it, and then move on to another. ... Read more

October 9, 2020October 2, 2020 The Agile Manifesto

Agile Weaknesses – When It Is Not a Good Approach

It may come as a shock, but there are agile weaknesses. These are situations where a different approach brings a lower risk. These weaknesses also point to the strengths and attributes of a project or team that make agile the best choice for our framework. None of these are set in stone. Thus, knowing about the weakness is an opportunity for overcoming it. The Team Is Central Most of the Agile weaknesses center around the team and their ability to follow through on the principles or values. The most essential of these is the ability of the team to handle cross-functional tasks. It requires developers in the dev team rather than just several coders. We ask team members to understand... Read more