Marko Majkic
Software and Management Consultant
Five Scrum Short Stories
When I was first introduced to Scrum, I thought “What an easy and beautiful way to be efficient!” After years of doing Scrum, I found that it’s not that easy. It was easy to learn. And, as many times before, “easy come, easy go” was true. It was very easy forget easily learned facts of…
Ideas for splitting Epics into User Stories
Remember you are looking to develop slices of the business opportunity the produces valuable working software with the potential to generate feedback from users. Sometimes the story slices are not deliverable to end-users but they generate value from the learning gained in producing them. They should all result in testable and demonstrable software. Consider applying…
How to Challenge Your Team & Take It to the Next Level
Following are the steps the team took to change this endemic challenge of focusing on what they could not change. Note step 7. All of the steps are critical in the process, and step 7 is the one that will take your team to the next level – it is Follow-Up – and it will…
Product Backlog in a Great Shape
As a Product Owner your main duty is to keep Product Backlog in a great shape, in condition which is enabling developers to work on PBL items. So, this is what you need to take care about: *Definition of Ready – each user story needs to fulfil these criteria to be accepted as ready for…
Agile Team Motivation
Based on Dan Pink’s articles and books, money can be a motivator for jobs without great uncertainty and mostly in mechanical jobs, with very small degree of expected innovation and creativity. When non-linear productivity is present, with great degree of uncertainty and where innovation and creativity do finishing the job, there are three main motivators:…
How to estimate?
Why estimation is important? Estimating prioritized backlog, we are making transparent to business side what (roughly) can be done in the following period. Estimations in time are dependent on may factors: experience of the developer, we need to know who will exactly work on this if we want to estimate – and this is usually…
Estimate vs. #Noestimate
Here are pros and cons for #Estimates vs #NoEstimates. I don’t judge. I believe that there is no general rule for using these, but you need to listen and to help client/team/managers to make the decision which is the most useful for the product/project. #Estimates: Pros: Cons: #Noestimates Pros: Cons:
DoD – another good example
This is an example of a good and real Definition of Done list, I helped the team to create.
The Maturity Model
This is ThoughtWorks Maturity Model for the software development and can be easily translated to the agile environment. Practice Build management and continuous integration Environments and deployment Release management and compliance Testing Data management Level 3 – Optimizing: Focus on process improvement Teams regularly meet to discuss integration problems and resolve them with automation, faster…
Sprint 0 tasks
This is a list of preparation tasks which might be useful for Scrum fresh start. • Defining Scrum Team. • The Product’s pre sales estimation is already handy. • The stake holders are aware of Agile and Scrum. • Delivery In charge / Client Servicing if required is in place and understands the product. •…