User stories are intended to communicate a shared understanding between a product owner and a scrum team. There is a standard accepted and anticipated format that helps promote consistency, and having good acceptance criteria attached to the story defines and clarifies scope. But there is a very good reason why one of the principles of […]

When I’m teaching an agile bootcamp class and talking about work in process, I always make a point (usually multiple times) to tell the attendees that agile is about finishing work…not about starting work. I reinforce this by pointing out that you can have a glorious looking burndown chart for the duration of the sprint […]

As agile coaches, we use and value metrics as an objective way to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of teams that we are coaching. When we first engage with a new team, we conduct an agile assessment of the team’s capabilities that results in a baseline metric that pinpoints exactly where we should focus our […]

Two of the twelve Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto  are about people working together in close daily collaboration. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. In a well functioning Agile team, this collaborative connection […]

Note from Mike… I want to welcome Jim Magers to the LeadingAgile team.  Jim is doing a project with me in Minneapolis, and I asked him to join me here and share some of his experiences from the field. Your team is new to agile. So far, you’ve groomed and organized your backlog, defined your […]