written by gunther gerlach-2009
How it works: Select a regular time period over which to measure project velocity. If you’re using fixed Sprints or iterations, use that time period. Otherwise you can use weeks, fortnights or months. It doesn’t really matter which as long as you’re consistent. Add up the estimates for all the tasks/deliverables/features in your chosen time period. It doesn’t matter whether the estimates are in days, hours or even in relative story points. Only include the estimates for any items that are 100% complete and signed off within the time period. Anything still in progress counts as zero, as there is no value in incomplete work.
Gunther Gerlach
written by gunther gerlach-2009
Obviously the daily stand-up (or daily scrum) is a good form of status reporting. It’s great for people with a close interest in the project who can spare the time to get to the scrum. But it’s really no good for other stakeholders that can’t get to the scrum each day, either because they are interested in less detail, or because they have an interest in many projects and can’t be at all the scrums.
Gunther Gerlach
written by gunther gerlach-2009
The Product Backlog, in its simplest form, is a list of things that people want to be done to the product, in priority order. Anyone can add anything to the Product Backlog. Anyone. The agile Scrum process, and agile development principles generally, are collaborative and inclusive. There is no longer any need to say no.
The Product Backlog can contain anything. Anything relating to the product that is. Bugs. Enhancements. Whole projects. Issues. Risks. Anything. Having said that, items on the Product Backlog should ideally be expressed in business terms that are of some value to the user (or customer, or business). Not as technical tasks.
Gunther Gerlach
written by gunther gerlach-2009
There are many approaches for the estimation of a project. Some people will tell you to use the estimation based on story points from Fibonacci numbering system, however this approach only work when features are similar enough to keep a project velocity chart (average project velocity per sprint) in your project but, we all know that this is impossible, some features will need less than a hour of development and other sometimes two days. I am not saying that this methodology is not good, I am just saying that is perfect to get your project velocity chart from the project but if you really want an estimate to get the cost and scope from your project you need the estimate in a period of time, usually days of work.
Gunther Gerlach
written by gunther gerlach-2009
Use Cases: are in fact such a clear description of a feature, and the fact that each Use Cases could stand alone. They made it really easy to move cards representing the Use Cases around the
As a difference between this methodology from the others is that Agile Development teams capture requirements at a high level only, just-in-time for each feature to be developed. Agile scrum methodology requirements are ideally visual and should be barely sufficient, i.e. the absolute minimum required to enable development and testing to proceed with reasonable efficiency. The rationale for this is to minimise the time spent on anything that doesn’t actually form part of the end product.
Gunther Gerlach
written by gunther gerlach-2009
Use Cases: are in fact such a clear description of a feature, and the fact that each Use Cases could stand alone. They made it really easy to move cards representing the Use Cases around the whiteboard, as a way of managing progress. The downside of the Use Cases is that they are a little complicated. When you look closely, they’re not that complicated really. But they tend to need a Business Analyst to write them. And they tend to be a bit off-putting for end users or business people.
Gunther Gerlach
