Responding to one of the most common complaints he hears about Scrum done poorly, Certified Scrum Trainer Mark Levison spent this summer applying two decades worth of Agile study and personal observation to write his newest book, The Guide to Effective Retrospectives. Available for download here, this eBook offers practical advice and specific suggestions to […]
Notes from a Tool User
Agile Retrospectives
What is the difference between an Agile Retrospective and a Post Mortem? Retrospectives are the foundation of Continuous Improvement and Short Feedback loops.
What is the Recommended Scrum Team Size?
Nearly every client I work with asks me this question at some point. The Scrum Guide offers very limited guidance, suggesting 3-9 people per team (exclusive of ScrumMaster and Product Owner), without giving reasons or context for those numbers. There isn’t one universally correct answer for optimal team size, but there are a number of […]
Definition of Done vs. User Stories vs. Acceptance Criteria
One of the more frequently asked questions in my Scrum workshops is around the difference between Definition of “Done” and Acceptance Criteria, and how they relate to User Stories. While Acceptance Criteria is a commonly understood concept in software development, Definition of “Done” is unique to Scrum. People get confused between these two things but […]
Choosing a Scrum Sprint Length – Shorter Beats Longer
How long should a Scrum Sprint be? A Scrum Sprint is a short period of time when the Scrum Team works, but there is no hard rule as to how long that should be – in this post, we cover the pros and cons of shorter and longer Sprints and how you can discover what […]
Scrum Anti-Patterns – How We Hold Back Our Scrum Teams
In software development work, a design pattern is a description of a solution to a recurring problem. It outlines the elements that are necessary to solve the problem, including context and the consequences of certain actions, without prompting the reader to solve the problem a specific way, leaving them with the agency to write code […]
