At this point, anyone who is doing Agile software development is familiar with the daily stand-up. Traditionally, during that meeting, each team member answers the following questions for the larger group: What did you do yesterday? What did you do today? Is there anything blocking you from moving forward? This approach works well for teams […]

Atomic does not have a dedicated scrum master position. The closest comparison is our delivery lead role, which is a blend of project management, account management, and product management. However, we often work with clients that do have dedicated scrum masters. Many times, the people in these roles were hired as traditional project managers, but […]

Publication of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 turned the software development world on its head. Waterfall, with its months of comprehensive planning followed by months of heads-down development, was out; Agile was in. The Agile Manifesto lays out its values and the principles behind them, but it avoids defining a process. And this is good. […]

I took a gap year later in life and worked at an auto shop while I contemplated my next career move. It was really interesting to work in an industry that was completely different from technology. One of the most fascinating things was seeing how patterns of work evolved at the shop. They mimicked many […]

This is the second in a two-part series about adjusting Agile practices for larger teams. In Part 1 of this mini-series, we took a look at how individuals and interactions impact Agile practices. In Part 2, I’ll share what we’ve seen in the other areas. Confession: Most of these points still come down to individuals […]

Our project teams usually fit into most people’s definition of a small team, even if you include key players from our client in the count. As a result, many of our default Agile practices are best suited to that smaller team size and need a few adaptations as team size grows. On a recent project […]

In my last post, I described a process for keeping a large Agile team focused on getting work ready for developers. The process includes a few crucial check-in meetings: product backlog refinement, design refinement, and technical refinement. Because the check-ins are so few, it’s very important to keep that time focused on the work at […]