Articles

caution sign Proactively Planning for Risks to Your Agile Project

Being aware of risk is good project management common sense. But to address risk quickly and effectively when you encounter it, the best method is to establish clear, agreed-upon, communicated responses to risk before it even happens. Dave Browett suggests some tactics to mitigate and confront risk you can use with your team.

Dave Browett's picture Dave Browett
money and a clock The Effect of Time on Value in Your Agile Projects

Using effort estimates as the only criteria for deciding whether work is undertaken could be leaving money on the table. Considering value—in particular, the effect of time on value, as in whether there is a cost of delay—makes for more intelligent conversations and better decisions.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
rising graph Plotting Data to Understand Your Agility

Many teams think they are agile in their projects, but if you're not receiving and analyzing feedback regularly, you're not really agile. Plotting the feedback you get on a chart throughout your sprints can help you see whether you have a lag. Read on to learn how to gather and use your feedback to be truly agile.

Mosesraj R's picture Mosesraj R
Santa checking list Would Santa Claus Make a Good Product Owner?

The elves working on Project Santa—you know, the big delivery that happens every December 24—have decided to go agile. But Santa, the product owner, is busy and not always available to answer questions or provide guidance. What kind of suggestions and improvements should they address in their retrospective?

Dave Browett's picture Dave Browett
Balancing Waterfall Predictability with Agile Flexibility

In this FAQ column, Arlen Bankston highlights the difficulty many companies have making the full transition to agile, straddling between waterwall ways and the new horizons of agility.  Arlen provides techniques that can enable companies to ease into the transition, allowing their organization to make the adjustments without the burden of large plans and commitments.

Arlen Bankston's picture Arlen Bankston
pots of grass Stop Re-estimating Your Stories for Every Iteration

Many agile practitioners recommend re-estimating stories at the beginning of each iteration to increase accuracy. Adrian Wible, however, argues that re-estimating stories within an iteration planning meeting actually distorts results and decreases predictability. See if you need to rethink your planning procedures.

Adrian Wible's picture Adrian Wible
Flow chart for an organization Realizing Value by Establishing an Agile Project Management Office

Some believe that an overarching organizational and governance model to structure operations in agile environments is needed. An agile project management organization can act as an aggregator and evaluator of agile project data metrics to help leaders track performance for improved value delivery.

Gail Ferreira's picture Gail Ferreira
Become a Great ScrumMaster

Performing all the functions required to facilitate project teams as ScrumMaster can be a task. Zuzi Sochova describes creative ways to become a master of Scrum by adopting a ScrumMaster state of mind.

Zuzi Sochova's picture Zuzi Sochova
Project Management Tips to Improve Test Planning
Slideshow

When done right, testing is more than test plans, test scripts, and executing tests. In fact a test leader should consider testing a sub-project of the larger development project. By applying the same techniques project managers use to plan and manage the overall project, test leaders can...

Ricki Henry, Clark County Nevada
Five ways 5 Ways Testers Can Mitigate Practical Risks in an Agile Team

Testers who analyze quality in every aspect of the team’s deliverables also have a responsibility to mitigate risks and practical issues that are bound to come up, and help the team succeed in their product as well as at being agile. Here are five such issues that testers can help the team alleviate or avoid.

Nishi Grover's picture Nishi Grover

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