Velocity Is Not the Goal: Measuring What Really Matters in Agile
Velocity is a key Scrum metric but shouldn't be the main goal. Solely focusing on it can distort effectiveness and undermine Agile values. It measures sprint work but is merely a byproduct. The core of Scrum is delivering customer value and continuous improvement, not just story points. Prioritizing velocity can compromise quality, collaboration, and innovation, fostering inflated output and eroding trust. Scrum teams must emphasize meaningful value and process refinement, leading to natural velocity improvement as they align with stakeholders. Choose purpose over numbers for sustainable progress.
Why Scrum Teams Should Track Cycle Time (And How to Improve It)
In Agile, cycle time is key to effectiveness and value delivery. This metric, from task start to deployment, affects productivity and customer satisfaction. Measuring cycle time helps identify bottlenecks, streamline processes, and improve collaboration. Embrace it to empower teams in optimizing workflows. Break free from constraints and unleash your team's potential.
A "Reality Framework" for Metrics
Evaluating the Performance of a Scrum Master
What's the RIGHT Way to Use Metrics With a Scrum Team?
In many organizations, nothing wastes more time than metrics with no purpose. Here's help on the RIGHT way to measure team performance.
The Importance of Value to the Product Owner
Understanding outcome value isn’t just beneficial, it’s critically important. After all, delivering value is our priority!
Gearing a Team for Maximum Outcomes
Creating a maximum outcome team is every ScrumMaster’s goal, but you must first understand how great teams form and what YOU need to do to create a great team.
Jim's 10 Tips for Scrum Development Teams
With COVID-19 forcing us all to learn about working from home, we're re-publishing our list of "Jim's 10 Tips for Scrum Development Teams," UPDATED for 2020!
It's All About Value
One small change can make a BIG difference to your Product Owner success. Before worrying about putting value on backlog items, here's some simple tips.
Simplify Your Work by Slicing
When slicing a backlog item, we're taking a complex problem and paring it down into smaller problems, which are easier to solve and build.
5 Ways to At Least DOUBLE Team Performance
Here's 5 steps you can take as a manager or ScrumMaster to help DOUBLE your Development Team's performance (#5 is a shocker; it's easy but SUPER non-intuitive!)
Speeding up Your Scrum Teams
Effective Scrum use is more than Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, and so on. To see a big difference in your team's Sprints, make these workflow changes.
Don't Waste Time in Sprint "Capacity" Planning
Trying to plan detailed capacity for a Sprint? Thankfully, there are two things we can do to make capacity planning easier (and faster) in Sprint Planning.
I Think We Broke Something... Somewhere
Many organizations transitioning to Agile Development suffer from a preconceived idea that coding tasks and testing tasks should be seen as separate activities.
Measuring Scrum Team Productivity
Measuring Scrum Team productivity is something nearly every organization wants, but performance metrics should really only be created under two conditions.
Backlog Refinement Part 3: When Have We Refined Enough?
How do you make sure the Scrum team refines enough backlog items for the next Sprint? Part 3 of my series on Backlog Refinement!