by Cynthia Kahn | Apr 30, 2017 | Agile Scrum
Better Understand the Purpose of Story and Acceptance Criteria Some who practice scrum believe that acceptance criteria are optional. Others only write a one sentence summary and don’t even bother writing story requirements. These practices could be a recipe for...
by Cynthia Kahn | Apr 23, 2017 | Agile Scrum
Try Applying these 3 Techniques to Increase Sprint Velocity In agile scrum, we only count closed stories when we calculate velocity. Stories have only 2 statuses at the end of the sprint: 0% or 100% complete. No partial credit for incomplete stories. Many teams refuse...
by Gerri Grove | Apr 16, 2017 | Agile Scrum
Two Winning Techniques that Help Product Owners Set Priorities We’ve all seen it. The business provides a list of enhancements to a Product Owner. You, as Scrum Master, call a meeting to walk through the enhancements and try to facilitate prioritization. What...
by Gerri Grove | Apr 9, 2017 | Agile Scrum
Do Not Postpone Retrospective I am surprised by how many teams tell me they forgo Retrospective. To me, Retrospective is one of the most important meetings in Scrum. Why? Because the Retrospective is the heart of continuous improvement. It’s where the team evaluates...
by Gerri Grove | Mar 18, 2017 | Agile Scrum
How to Reduce Risk on Any Agile Scrum Project One of our readers asked me how to reduce project risk in a blog comment. The moment I read the comment, I started thinking about what to recommend. Yes, we all know the benefits of agile: get your product into the hands...
by Cynthia Kahn | Nov 16, 2016 | Agile Scrum
The 5 Key Ingredients to Write Better Stories Every time we teach a GSD Scrum Training workshop, one of the most difficult concepts for students to grasp is how to write a story. On the surface, the concept seems quite simple: Describe the user’s functional...
