December 13, 2016
Of course we need tools and techniques to successfully manage a project, but we also need agreement among all the stakeholders — agreement on budget and schedule, agreement on functionality, and agreement on rules of engagement. In this series, I’ve discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of Agile methods, Scrum in particular. Pristine Agile methods are ideal for projects…
September 5, 2016
Acceptance criteria (AC or ACs for short) seem to be among the most feared and neglected concepts in Scrum, and I’m not sure why. The best way to understand them is by comparing Acceptance Criteria to a Story statement. A properly formed Story statement looks like this: As a {someone} I want to {do something} in order to {accomplish some…
July 17, 2016
Deconstructing the Agile Manifesto – Part 1 When I’ve asked Program Managers and other team leaders why they don’t plan their projects all the way through to the next release, they almost always say it’s pointless. Why? “Because the requirements will change and planning things too far ahead will waste time.” Yes. It will. Time will be wasted. You…
July 7, 2016
A False Dichotomy I’ve been just as guilty as anyone of drawing the apparent distinction between “feature drive” and “date driven” projects. It’s almost not worth stating that all projects have features, and without at least some of those features, the product has no value. True, a project can have a list of required features and no deadline, but it would…