I’m often asked about improving the estimates of task hours generated during planning meetings. Years of waterfall development have taught us – if we improve the estimates we will do a much better job of tracking the sprint progress. When this comes up I like to ask two questions: why estimate task size at all? […]
Software Development
Tools, Tools, Tools
As software developers we have this innate belief that another tool will solve all our problems. To that end many agile practitioners search for a tool to track their projects for them. However in using a tool we miss the benefits of cards posted on a whiteboard/corkboard in a public place. Let’s compare the options […]
Pair Programming vs. Code Reviews – It’s a no Brainer
Ok so I’m about a month behind. Over on Coding Horror Jeff Atwood asked “I can’t help wondering if pair programming is nothing more than code review on steroids”. In a word ‘No’. Code Reviews …(and I’ve done many) are static. One or more people study the code often long after it was written and […]
Best Agile Books 2007 Development/Code Related
The third and final my Best Agile Books the 2007 Edition series. (Part II was Background Material). There will be even fewer notes than there were in yesterday’s. It really has been a long week. Development/Code Related Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers – Do you have legacy code? Does your code include […]
Best Agile Books 2007 the Background Material
This is the second part of my Best Agile Books in 2007 Edition. This post will considerably lighter on notes than its predecessor because I’m tired and under the weather. Background Books Corporate Culture Survival Guide by Edgar H. Schein – an insightful book that looks at the corporate culture and how it forms. In […]
Best Agile Books the 2007 Edition
Last year in response to some questions at a CSM course I wrote a post: “Top 8 Agile Books: Beyond the Basics“. This past week I was help out at a CSM course when the topic came up again. This time I’ve a much longer list of books. Top Three – I wouldn’t start an […]
Transparency Builds Trust
I hadn’t really thought Transparency as a Lesson until I got to the end of the week and still haven’t written about the Product Owner. It’s better to admit the failure – I have no posting ready, than to either ignore the problem or dash off a poor quality post. Scrum forces transparency on us in […]
Good Agendas Make Great Meetings
Think the standard Scrum agendas will help you get value out of the meetings? There is a lot more you can do with agendas to improve Reviews and Retrospectives.