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 […]
Project Management
Scrum By Example – The Team Gets Bottlenecked
A ScrumMaster Tales case study of an Agile team that relies on one specialized developer for all tasks, which becomes a bottleneck for the sprint.
Misuse of Velocity in Agile Projects
Why story points should not be used to ‘compare velocity between teams’ or ‘benchmark data on velocity.’ Agile/Scrum teams use relative estimation.
Meeting Ground Rules Updated
At Agile 2007, I attended Jean Tabaka’s session “Why I don’t like Mondays.” She recommended establishing ground rules for team meetings. We came up with these.
Agile and Scrum Smells
Smells are a series of simple patterns in Scrums that describe a problem, which can then lead to potential solutions.