agile project management

Business Practices, Ruby

Monitoring Past Due AR with Xero and Slack

I've created a Ruby script that reports on past due accounts receivable in Xero, and automatically publishes that information to Slack.

Project & Team Management

How to Run a Sprint Planning Meeting for a Happy, Productive Team

When done right, the Sprint Planning Meeting serves as a well tuned-constraint, keeping the team sustainably delivering regular, measurable progress.

Growing as Makers

You Can’t Always Outwork the Requests! (How to Reduce an Overloaded Queue)

Talented people often have more requests than time to accomplish them. Their natural tendency is to power through, but that definitely has a limit.

Project & Team Management

Better Project Budgeting with the SUMIF Function

Your spreadsheet's SUMIF function is super handy when budgeting for a project. It can show you, at a glance, how the costs of different features add up.

Project & Team Management

How to Estimate an Agile/Scrum Story Backlog with Points

A step-by-step overview of the tools and processes you need to do a points estimate of a project backlog the Agile/Scrum way.

Personal Optimization

Self-Managing People Are Smart about Asking for Help

First identify what you want help with, then dive into the details. It will make the conversation more productive and make problem solving easier.

Project & Team Management

The Delivery Lead: A New Type of Maker

Delivery Leads interface with clients for happy project teams and software delivered on time and budget. They're a maker, a project manager, and much more.

Project & Team Management

Stop Making Sprint Commitments!

Making sprint commitments will slow you down and waste your time. Make a forecast, then challenge your team to see how far into the backlog they can get.

Managing Your Team

Agility is about Accuracy

Projects, especially software projects, are liable to change. Agile gives us the power to change course, navigate around obstacles, and add new ideas.

Project & Team Management

3 Steps to Better Project Scope Management

No project plan goes unchanged, and that's okay. So here are 3 ways to better manage your agile project scope when the inevitable happens.

Project & Team Management

What Rambling in Meetings Says about Your Team

By watching ourselves and colleagues for rambling in meetings, we can find and address causes of uncertainty in our project and reduce risk.

Project & Team Management

Pitfalls of Integrated Design and Development Burn Charts

Integrated design/development backlogs are a great way of coordinating tasks, but integrated burn charts are another story.