Fostering a culture of Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement in software development refers to the ongoing process of enhancing and refining software products, processes, and practices to deliver better quality, efficiency, and value to users. It is a fundamental principle of agile methodologies and other modern software development approaches. The goal is...
What is Shift Left Testing?
Shift Left Testing is a software development and testing approach that emphasizes moving the testing process earlier in the development life cycle. The goal is to identify and address defects and issues as early as possible, ideally during the initial stages of development, rather than...
Prioritise your deliverables using MoSCoW
In Agile development methodologies, MoSCoW is not a reference to the city, but rather an acronym used to prioritize and categorize requirements or features. MoSCoW stands for: M – Must have: These are the most critical requirements or features that are essential for the project’s...
Using the DEEP principle in Agile
The DEEP principle in Agile is an acronym that represents a set of characteristics that user stories or product backlog items should possess to be considered well-refined and ready for development. DEEP stands for: Detailed Appropriately: User stories should be detailed enough to provide a...
Writing meaningful user stories with the INVEST principle
INVEST is an acronym that represents a set of principles used in Agile software development to define and evaluate user stories or product backlog items. It helps teams create well-defined, valuable, and manageable requirements. Each letter in the INVEST acronym stands for a specific principle....
Steps to rein in your oversized Product Backlog
We discussed the Product Backlog in an earlier post. One of the challenges Scrum Masters / Project Managers may face is an oversized backlog that makes it difficult to groom and identify key items to take into your upcoming sprint(s). Cleaning up an oversized product...
What is a Product Backlog?
A product backlog is a prioritized list of work for the development team that is derived from the roadmap and its requirements. It will typically comprise of a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes, etc. The backlog is...
Best Practices to follow for your Daily Standups
When conducting an agile daily standup, there are several best practices you can adopt to ensure a productive and efficient meeting. Here are some recommendations: Timebox the meeting: Keep the daily standup short and focused. Aim for a timebox of 15 minutes or less, depending...
An introduction to DevOps
DevOps is a software development approach that emphasises collaboration, communication, and integration between software development and IT operations teams. The goal of DevOps is to enable organisations to deliver software faster and with higher quality by reducing the time it takes to develop, test, and...
The Spotify Way of Project Management
Spotify is a music streaming service that has gained recognition for its innovative approach to project management. Spotify has developed a unique project management framework that it refers to as the “Spotify model“. The Spotify model is a flexible, agile, and scalable approach to managing...
Scrum at Scale
Scrum at Scale is an approach to scaling the Scrum framework to large and complex organizations. It provides a framework for multiple Scrum teams to collaborate and coordinate their efforts while maintaining the flexibility, adaptability, and focus on delivering value that Scrum is known for....
Scrumban: An Overview
Scrumban is a hybrid agile development methodology which was originally developed to help projects transition from Scrum to Kanban. The term was coined by Corey Ladas; author of “Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development”. Scrumban combines the structure of Scrum with the...
Definition of Done
Agile projects need to have a very well-defined Definition of Done (DoD) to avoid confusion amongst team members, and to track project progress correctly. What do we mean by Done? The Definition of Done is when all conditions or criteria that a software product must...
Large Scale Scrum – The LeSS Framework
Large Scale Scrum or LeSS is a framework that enables the usage of Scrum for large teams. It is about applying the principles, elements, and purpose of Scrum for multiple-team Scrum, not multiple Scrum teams. It is a simple and minimalistic framework where there is...
Scrum of Scrums
Scrum of Scrums methodology was first implemented in 1996 by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber at IDX Systems (now GE Healthcare). Both Sutherland and Schwaber needed a way to coordinate eight business units with multiple product lines per business unit and synchronize individual teams with...
What is Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?
The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is a set of workflow and organization patterns for implementing Agile Practices at an Enterprise level. The framework encompasses a set of principles, processes and best practices that helps organizations adopt agile methodologies, such as Lean and Scrum, to develop...