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Showing posts with the label Sprint

The shape of Classic Sprint Burndown Charts

 Many new leaders of scrum teams want to know what the burndown chart "should" look like.  Some even start running statistical calculations on the data (I once worked with a 'coach' that had a spreadsheet custom designed to extract just such anomalies).  The best answer I've given is a session on the whiteboard to explain: how the data is obtained how accurate & precise the data is - just good enough & not any better interruptions that MAY be made ... but only by the TEAM  So here is that whiteboard session - on index cards... Let's go one at a time. They are learning to make their work visible... praise this effort - it can be quite scary to show your work. Do not use tools that show this mathematically perfect line from start to finish.  Only robots are capable of such precession, and only with the perfect PLAN. If you see something like this in the first 3 or 4 sprints... it is a good sign.  Now reduce the scope of work by at least HALF. This is ...

#12 of 100 Agile Transition Guide Delights

"That went very well."  Said in reference to today's sprint planning session, and an inferred commentary upon the previous planning session which was a tornado disaster zone of a trailer park. Few people like to attend a disaster waiting to happen.  But I've found that there are times when it's the best thing that can happen for a team.  And while I don't cheer for the tornado, I don't mind its visit to the sprint planning meeting once in a while. I'm typically heard explaining why the tornado hit our little trailer park... it's because we didn't do any (or enough) backlog refinement .  And then people want to know what backlog refinement is - what should happen in these "meetings"? If you search the old books and articles on Scrum you might not find this meeting mentioned.  But that's just because refining the backlog was something that most teams understood needed to happen and did what needed to be done.  Somewhere alon...