Innovators Guide To the Galaxy
News and tips on how to grow a sustainable business
Scrum is an agile framework for developing software but can be used in many other industries as well. Scrum was created by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber in early 1990s and has since been the most popular agile method. Continue reading “SCRUM”
Refactoring is a technique where you changes existing code without changing the external behavior. Continues refactoring and improving code design makes the code cleaner and it´s easy to accumulate technical debt and refactoring is a great way to repay that debt. Continue reading “REFACTORING”
Kanban is a method/framework implementing agile process in software development. Kanban comes from TPS (Toyota Production System) and Lean. David Anderson was one of the first to take the Kanban method to IT and software development. Continue reading “KANBAN”
Iterative development is a key practice in agile development. In iterative development the design, coding and testing are done almost at the same time and are repeated in a short cycles, often called iteration or sprint. Iterative approach helps the team to experiment and focus on learning and flexibility for changes instead of Big Design Up Front.
Instead of waiting and creating a full specification the teams start to design and develop the features just needed right now. This iterations is repeated and after every phase a new version is delivered. This helps the team to create value and plan for unexpected events. To make this work the team need to find the smallest part that have value and start to iterate around it and deliver new versions of the software after every iteration.
It is hard to start working like this but when done right the teams will be able to handle the complexity and demands from stakeholders much better the without this practice. Iteration doesn’t mean that there is no planning or design upfront. There is, but it´s involve the team and other stakeholders and the design, code, test cycle is repeated instead of closed gates between steps in the process.
Iterative development is closely attached to incremental development where iterative can or should be a part of incremental development.
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Thanks to Jimmy Janlén for letting me use his pictures from Agile Topics Cards.
A/B testing is a method where you test two different versions of a feature or product. This is typical on marketing and research. When using this method in software development you have to versions, for example a website.
A, could be the existing website (if you have any) and A is typical the control version where you test other versions against.
And the other version B is the new design or feature. Then you randomly split traffic between this two “A/B” versions and measure the outcome trough predefined metrics and hypothesis.
After the test is completed is time to analyze the result from the experiment. When doing you can then deiced which solution is preferred by the users and with real data backing up the decisions.
Make sure to run the test simultaneously and not after each other.
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Thanks to Jimmy Janlén for letting me use his pictures from Agile Topics Cards.
The backlog grooming (also Backlog Refinement Meeting and Story Time) is a meeting where the team or some team members (and the product owner) regularly “groom” the product backlog. This meeting is to make sure the backlog is always up to date. This grooming sessions usually take place 2-3 days before next sprint planning to make sure the backlog is updated.
The backlog in agile approach is dynamic way of handling requirements. This means that the detailed of stories, priority and breakdown of task are different and just in time and the backlog should have all the things that are relevant at any point in time. To maintain this dynamic and organic backlog the team needs to clean, update and take care of the product backlog regular. And this is where the grooming part comes in.
What a grooming sessions can be used to.
To make this work is it important to plan time in for this activity (5-10 percent is a good rule), even if you may not need to do it every sprint it is better to plan for it ahead. Also make sure to keep this meeting as short as possible and try to get as many team members to participate. If you can´t get the whole team, it´s okay but the product owner should participate. Everyone should be prepared and focused on the grooming process.
This technique shouldn’t affect the teams output negative, instead, if done right it should help the team to perform even better and help the team and product owner to guild the right things in the right way.
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Thanks to Jimmy Janlén for letting me use his pictures from Agile Topics Cards.
Slicing is an important step in software development process and it’s including slicing big activities to smaller, manageable tasks. There are usually two fundamentally different ways of slicing work, horizontal and vertical slicing. Continue reading “SLICING”
The agile manifesto is a manifest for agile software development. In 2001 17 people gathered, discussed and tried to find a common ground for software development. Influence at that point was methods like Extreme programming, Scrum, DSDM, Crystal, FFD etc. Out from that meeting came the first agile manifesto with 4 values and 12 principles. Continue reading “AGILE MANIFESTO”
A bottleneck in process and software development is a part in a chain of process. A bottleneck is the part that reduce the process capacity and controls the flow in the system. A bottleneck isn’t always a problem, because all process have a internal or external bottleneck but you should know where it is. Continue reading “BOTTLENECK”
Daily stand-up or just stand up meeting is a popular method in agile software for team to synchronize their daily work. The team stand up to focus and keep it short because of the discomfort of standing.
This meeting is usually in the morning, on same time and same place to keep it crisp. Its also often timeboxed to around 15 minutes. To keep the meeting sharp there is also an meeting facilitator, usually the team leader, but nothing prevents the team to rotate the facilitator.
All team members are supposed to attend to the meeting and also the team leader/Scrum master. Remember that this is not a reporting meeting but a meeting for the team to plan upcoming day and help out if there is any problem.
Other outside the team is welcome to listen, but should stand out side the circle and not participate in the discussions.
Remember that this meeting is not a just a stand-up meeting. It should be a good start for the team, keep teams focus on the right thing, support improvements and communicate whats happening.
In Scrum, teams often answer this three questions one by one:
Another method is to Walk the board where the team start from right to the left on the board and talk about the tasks.
The meeting should be short and if there is questions that need to be clarified the facilitator/team decides to take it directly afterwards.
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Thanks to Jimmy Janlén for letting me use his pictures from Agile Topics Cards.
Innovators Guide To the Galaxy 