The sprint retrospective is one of the main Agile ceremonies. By definition, it is an opportunity for the team to reflect on the work completed over a short period of time and make changes. However important that may seem, eventually, you’ll consider canceling your team retros. Read more on Five Reasons You’ll Be Asked to Cancel Sprint Retros – and Why to Say No…
Author: Amy Burke
Test your Software Rewrite with a Pilot Release
Rewriting your organization’s current software is a huge undertaking. It can be intimidating and cause uncertainty, especially for those who are more averse to change.
A pilot is a helpful exercise during any software development process, but especially so during a rewrite where the scope is very large. A pilot allows you to test the software within a group or location without fully rolling it out to all users. Read more on Test your Software Rewrite with a Pilot Release…
Six Ways to Ensure People Don’t Dread Your Meeting
Meetings fill a lot of our working days, yet most people dread them or don’t understand why they have to attend so many. I haven’t confirmed this with Google, but I think meetings are in the running as the subject of the most memes. (Spoiler: None say, “Please schedule another meeting!” without sarcasm.) I have a theory, though, that the people who hate meetings just have not attended many that are well-run and productive. Read more on Six Ways to Ensure People Don’t Dread Your Meeting…
Five Ways to Help Your Organization Embrace Software Change
They say change is the only constant, yet change is never easy. I consider myself pretty open to change, but I still find myself fumbling around for a few days when Gmail updates its interface or someone tells me about a new shortcut I should start using. Read more on Five Ways to Help Your Organization Embrace Software Change…
Three Ways to Build Trust & Safety as a Team Leader
More and more studies have shown that the most effective teams are the ones whose members trust each other and feel “psychologically safe.” Psychological safety is when a person feels he/she is safe to take a risk and does not need to worry that the team will punish him/her for asking questions, admitting a mistake, or any offering a new idea. Read more on Three Ways to Build Trust & Safety as a Team Leader…
Managing Product Dev. with a Digital Story Map
Have you ever scrolled through your product backlog and thought, “I wish I had a better way to visualize product development?” Development tools like Pivotal and JIRA are great for developers working through their stories, but they fall short when you want a holistic picture of the project. They can’t help you understand how a given feature or the addition of another story will affect the scope, either. Read more on Managing Product Dev. with a Digital Story Map…