Category Archives: agile

Sprint Burndown Chart Template

Attached is a spreadsheet template for a Sprint Burndown Chart. Features: Color coding for the time estimate (green when estimate goes down and red when it goes up) Color coding for the status (In Progress, Done, and Impediment) Pace and … Continue reading

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Bad Timing of a Retrospective

During the last sprint, we made a critical error in planning our meetings.  Due to time constraints and people’s schedules, we scheduled the Sprint Retrospective for the last sprint after the Sprint Planning meeting for the next sprint.  The retrospective … Continue reading

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The Two-Page Complexity

Most ‘Quick-Start’ manuals that come with computers and other electronics do a very good job of keeping everything on one page.  Albeit, at times it is a very large page.  But they hold to the one page principle. The next … Continue reading

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Incrementally Iterate

Avoid making large sweeping changes to a product.  Small evolutions are better than large revolutions.  Large changes tend to alienate users when they feel they lost their expert knowlege of the system and their frustration will climax when changes do … Continue reading

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Agile Budgeting

People spend massive amounts of time creating and maintaing home budgets.  Budgets are important, but an Agile approach will help save time.  There are two basic classes for budgets: mandatory and discretionary expenses.  Mandatory is anything that you have to … Continue reading

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Timebox Your Life

When I wash my car, the first 30 minutes of washing with the hose and rag gets 99% of the dirt off my car.  The next 2 hours where I wax, clean the windows, dress the tires, use q-tips to … Continue reading

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Sprint Review Rules

The Sprint Review is the opportunity for the team to demonstrate their accomplishment for the last sprint.  This meeting is open to everyone.  Here are a few ground rules for Sprint Review Meeting: Everyone who worked on the project must … Continue reading

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The Location of the Done Board

We decided to put the “Done Board” in the hallway or other public location in the office to allow other teams and departments to get more exposure to the projects being worked on.  This succeeded in getting more visibility, however, … Continue reading

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SCRUM Training

I would like to thank Mark Pushinsky at Innovel for the SCRUM training he provided at Biz360.  From their site: Innovel helps large scale enterprises develop sustained competitive advantage. Our goal is to give your people and organization the tools … Continue reading

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Mind Map: Scrum

I created the following mind map to capture the Scrum process. PDF as well as MindMap files are available. Scrum Mind Map (Scrum Mindmap (PDF) | Scrum Mindmap (CDMM))

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