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The Five Levels of Agile Planning Contrary to popular belief, agile projects require as much planning as any other project type. It is the timing of this planning and how we attempt to minimize wasted effort that is different from other approaches. This article attempts to explain the different levels of agile planning and how we utilize them in an ongoing project.
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Team Assembly and Its Impact on Value and Innovation Simply putting a handful of developers together and calling it a “team” doesn’t cut it. There’s a better, more analytical approach to team assembly that results in more cohesive teams, faster ramp-up times to peak velocity, and improved innovation, business outcomes, and value.
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Accelerating the Adoption of Technical Practices Agile teams are supposed to take responsibility for how they work and how they learn. But what if you need to jump-start that learning? Agile transformation is about making this happen rather than waiting for it to happen. You need to get your team to learn the technical side of agile, and soon. Here are some effective approaches.
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Why Teams Stop Improving—and How to Jumpstart Their Efforts One of the most important features in agile software development is continuous improvement. However, after an initial burst of inspiration and productivity, teams may stop improving because they believe there are no issues left to address or the issues are too difficult to solve. People need to switch their mental models to keep addressing processes efficiently.
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Using Agile Pods to Realize the Potential of Your Team Agile pods are small custom agile teams, ranging from four to eight members, responsible for a single task, requirement, or part of the backlog. This organizational system is a step toward realizing the maximum potential of agile teams by involving members of different expertise and specialization, giving complete ownership and freedom, and expecting the best quality output.
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Agile: Don’t Worry, It’s Natural Although the idea of repeatedly exercising the full development lifecycle on smaller chunks of the requirements is newer to the software industry, it isn’t at all new to many other aspects of life and nature. We have been agile practitioners for quite some time, and the software development industry is just catching up. John Ryskowski addresses a few examples.
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Mitigating Team Hazards without a Typical Scrum Product Owner A good product owner should be collaborative, responsible, authorized, committed, and knowledgeable. But what do you do if yours doesn’t exemplify these characteristics? This article aims to showcase mitigation plans that can be effective for overcoming Scrum violations due to the fact that you’re not working with a typical product owner.
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Overcoming Resistance to an Agile Process Rollout Many engineering leaders and agile coaches believe that transitioning to agile is simply a matter of process training and expert advice. But frequently, it means that deeply ingrained habits need to be changed. This article identifies eight steps that address the wider organizational shifts implied by agile and will help create buy-in from your team.
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Slipping into ScrumBut ScrumMasters don't like to talk about their own troubles or failures, even though they say it’s good to fail. They don’t like to admit it happens to them, too. Sometimes it just creeps up. If you've started relaxing your Scrum principles and feel yourself slipping into ScrumBut, take hope: You and your team can recommit.
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Why Communication Is Key to the Agile Process We should all be much more active about improving our communication skills to be better at our jobs, but also (and more importantly) to make the most of the people around us. Whether you’re giving or receiving information verbally or through writing, no matter what your job is, communication is key.
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