Agile development practice consisting of having a short cycle known as a sprint to build functionality. Product owners prioritize a list of work items known as a backlog that the team selects which items to commit to finishing during a sprint. Daily stand-up meetings called scrums are held and ...
30
votes
9answers
2k views
Is unit testing or test-driven development worthwhile?
My team at work is moving to Scrum and other teams are starting to do test-driven development using unit tests and user acceptance tests. I like the UATs, but I'm not sold on unit testing for ...
12
votes
3answers
639 views
Scrum: how to handle backlog-items that are longer than one sprint
I'm starting with SCRUM and I have one understanding problem. How does SCRUM handle backlog items that take longer than one sprint?
26
votes
11answers
3k views
Why and for what reasons developers may not like “daily scrum”?
There are advantages in holding daily scrum, like:
Team get coordinated with each other
Everyone knows what amount of task has been done
Burndown chart gets more and more complete
Task board is ...
51
votes
16answers
3k views
Does Scrum turn active developers into passive developers?
I'm a web developer working in a team of three developers and one designer. It's now about five months that we've implemented the agile scrum software development methodology. But I have a weird ...
51
votes
13answers
3k views
How can we reduce downtime at the end of an iteration?
Where I work we practice scrum-driven agile with 3-week iterations. Yes, it'd be nice if the iterations were shorter, but changing that isn't an option at the moment.
At the end of the iteration, I ...
18
votes
8answers
1k views
What have you seen go wrong when introducing SCRUM?
What was the single point of failure encountered when your company decided to replace the current processes with SCRUM?
Can you give me some examples of things that have gone really wrong when a ...
13
votes
3answers
1k views
How can a single developer make use of Agile Methods?
I am a freelancer and work as a single developer. In all cases, I am the person wearing different hats. I am the Scrum Master and I am the only person in the development. What I am not is the Product ...
13
votes
16answers
2k views
Weeding out real agile from buzzword agile in an interview
I've been interviewing for co-ops (paid internships) lately and a large number of the companies I've been interviewing with have been saying they use Scrum or some other agile methodology (scrum being ...
5
votes
4answers
413 views
How to stop gold-plating and just be content to release working developments [closed]
The development team that I'm a member of has recently adapted to work according to Agile practices. This has personally highlighted the fact that I can't stop myself gold-plating code (and ...
7
votes
11answers
4k views
With agile, what do when a user story doesn't get completed in an iteration?
Do you just move the story to a new iteration, or delay the next iteration?
It gets a bit tricky when you use something like Jira when you have to copy or move around stories between iterations as it ...
1
vote
2answers
806 views
How to adopt scrum agile methodology for a small .Net team [closed]
I am working on a small product based company developing .Net applications. There is a small team with 5-6 developers. I am a person responsible for planning everything. But my primary role is ...
0
votes
2answers
181 views
Scrum Sprint Optimization
Looking for a systematic method for estimating and comparing the success factors of sprint configurations based on:
Team Size
Sprint Duration
Number of Stories
55
votes
15answers
5k views
Effective Ways to Introduce Agile into the Workplace?
In your experience (anecdotal or otherwise), what are some effective ways to introduce Agile into a non-Agile organization or company?
UPDATED: Can anyone speak to cases where you tried to introduce ...
21
votes
11answers
2k views
Scrum for a single programmer?
I'm billed as the "Windows Expert" in my very small company, which consists of myself, a mechanical engineer working in a sales and training role, and the company's president, working in a design, ...
35
votes
10answers
1k views
How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish
We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams.
As expected, the ...
29
votes
17answers
3k views
Daily standups- yea or nay? [closed]
How valuable (or not) do you think daily stand-up meetings are?
If you're not familiar with it, this refers to a daily meeting that is part of Scrum adherents (and some other agile methodologies). ...
22
votes
9answers
1k views
Dominant team members in a Scrum team
What would you do in a situation where a team member tries to take responsibilities are not initially assigned to him but to the Scrum Master?
17
votes
10answers
2k views
How does a Scrum team account for infrastructure tasks in the planning meeting?
How does a Scrum team account for dev/infrastructure tasks in the planning meeting?
At first glance, they do not seem like user stories since they do not deliver end user value.
However, attaching ...
23
votes
14answers
2k views
Does SCRUM usually involve massive overtime?
I would like to know if overtime is normal for sprints, or if it is an abuse of this methodology. I feel naive and spineless doing all-nighters if I don't have to.
Question is SCRUM specific. ...
20
votes
6answers
1k views
How is Agile different from XP?
I read few articles on web to find out how Agile, XP, Scrum, pair programming are different from each other / related to each other and I derived the following line:
Scrum and XP are almost same. XP ...
18
votes
3answers
639 views
Are there any surveys regarding Scrum efficiency?
Years passed since Scrum had been widely adopted in software world. I’m wondering if there is any efficiency survey done by more or less independent people/institutes. Obviously scrums gurus who ...
16
votes
5answers
931 views
How do you keep track of a requirements document on an agile team?
I understand that User Stories dominate the agile world, but how are these artifacts stored, so that new developers who join the team can come up to speed with the requirements?
What if the User ...
8
votes
2answers
619 views
What to do with estimation of incomplete story?
I am part of a development team that is relatively new to Scrum, suppose that at the end of the sprint a few large stories are either in progress or were not accepted by the PO.
Firstly, what ...
8
votes
5answers
513 views
Is it a good idea to appoint one of the scrum team member or scrum master as Product Owner?
Lately we had a project, in which client was busy touring. As usual scrum team was formed, management decided to appoint our analyst as Product owner since Client won’t be able to participate ...
7
votes
6answers
1k views
Can scrum master allocate tasks?
We are following scrum in our project. I see most of the times the scrum master allocates the tasks for us. However, I read from many scrum books that scrum works the other way around (the 'pull' ...
5
votes
5answers
615 views
Should you ever re-estimate user stories?
My current project is having a 'discussion' which is split down the middle- "this story is more complex than we originally thought, we should re-estimate" vs "you should never re-estimate as you only ...
12
votes
8answers
1k views
Are project managers useful in Scrum?
There are three roles defined in Scrum: Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. There is no project manager, instead the project manager job is spread across the three roles.
For instance:
The Scrum ...
6
votes
4answers
366 views
Sprint Meetings - What to talk about
In work we have just started using the Scrum methodology, it is working well but I have a question on the daily sprint meetings.
We set aside 15 minutes for the meeting (between the three devs and ...
9
votes
3answers
464 views
Scrum: What if the Product Owner has tasks?
I have just started working with a team that has picked up some aspects of Scrum (two week timeboxing) but not others (the team does not currently agree to all estimates or to the number of points in ...
7
votes
4answers
135 views
Where to put details about the acceptance criteria of a user story?
In this blog post about acceptance criteria the author explains that good acceptance criteria should:
State an intent not a solution (e.g. “The user can choose an account”
rather than “The user can ...
6
votes
3answers
870 views
Can the ScrumMaster and other team members be managed by the Product Owner?
Our team is switching to Scrum. I would be the ScrumMaster (in addition to being a developer), and another developer would become Product Owner (in addition to our product marketing guy).
All members ...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
Calculating last Sprint's Focus Factor
We have finished our Sprint in half the expected time and now we want to compute our focus factor to use in the next Sprint. Though, by doing the math by the book, we get an awful number. How are we ...
1
vote
4answers
621 views
How would you like to be coached?
My boss is going through a certification process reggarding "Coaching", and he asked me if he could coach me.
According to what I understood from him, I should have an objective on what should I be ...
6
votes
2answers
690 views
What's the best way to estimate story points in scrum?
I like the way planning poker works at the beginning of any project, letting you compare and discuss details of each story with one another.
One of the issues I've noticed with this is that through ...
4
votes
4answers
206 views
Spending a good fortune on a certificate holding Scrum Master or a Veteran XP coach?
There is a very prestigious company that delivers a well-sold software about financial systems. It has more that 20 years of history, and is staffed with about 20 programmers and much larger number ...
