Reflections on my early experiences as a product manager One of my first experiences as a product manager was to help the developers work with a stakeholder they found difficult because the stakeholder would constantly shift priorities and demand “more” to be...
A useful heuristic: when a customer can make sense of most items in the product backlog without translation, something different is happening. The backlog is not just a list—it is pointing to goals that exist beyond the team. A product backlog is often treated...
Walk the dog is simple way teams learn story splitting. I prefer a marketing twist to its name which came to me while coaching a team that was struggling to behave cross functionally and were paralyzed at delivering working software at the end of their sprint. It is a...
This is a variation of "Value Flow" exercise that Sanjeev Augustine did at Scrumgathering 2009 in Orlando. I found this exercise very useful to demonstrate the benefits of prioritization and lower batch sizes. I have facilitated a variation on this exercise with...
The term "bottleneck" refers to a point whereafter the flow or velocity perceptively reduces. It is metaphorically derived from flow of water through a narrow mouthed bottle where the flow of water is constrained by its neck. For drinking purposes it is a good thing...
Def: Velocity is the amount of estimated product backlog that a team can fully implement to meet the team Definition of Done within a given sprint [time-box]. The amount of product backlog in the definition above is often expressed in terms of "story points" or...