Agile and DevOps So Far

The old saying about the one thing that we can all count on as a constant is change?  This year has definitely been more than enough change for me, I’ve had multiple adjusts to our Agile methodology, new projects, new responsibilities, new team members and four different changes in leadership and on and on and … Continue reading

Agile Tasking – Why You Should Be Tasking Out Stories

There are five levels to Agile planning: Product Vision – What are you building, why, when and for who. Product Roadmap – Everything related to the releases needed to meet the vision; themes, features, objectives and dates. Release Planning – Everything related to meeting the goals of the release, the iterations, team and capacity, stories, … Continue reading

Strategic Planning for Teams

Creating strategic plans for an individual team is not something I’ve found is common but I feel it can be worthwhile. Typically, we are given goals and do the work to figure out how to achieve them, and that cycle repeats itself regularly over time. I found that when I got my first development team … Continue reading

Resource Planning

One of the most common questions I’m asked about running Agile projects and teams is how do I do resource planning. The short answer is that it’s a three or four step process; understand available time, iteration planning, release planning and then long term planning. Available Time There are a couple of things to consider … Continue reading

Agile So Far – January 2016

2015 was an odd year for us; we had a few projects that didn’t involve our product owners with people that don’t use Agile methodologies causing lots of frustration and timing issues, we took over development and support of a niche product, completing the backlog just as the product owner retired, our local leader also … Continue reading