Interviewing from the other side of the table, part 2: designing interview questions

Hiring new people is a risky activity for me as a manager. It takes time for screening and interviews, and once someone new starts, it will take the time of my team to train them before they are productive. There is risk in selecting the wrong person for a job, be it that they don’t have […]

Quality assurance for agile teams

Think about your team’s process for a moment. What steps do you go through for each new unit of work? What process do you have defined? What steps are in your visual management system? Does your team follow some sort of defined standard work? Chances are your team does have a process, defined or understood, […]

Are your analysts too far ahead of the team?

The Scrum process puts everyone on the team in the same position—Developer, doing what is necessary for the team to achieve its goal. I am guessing that in most teams, unlike pure Scrum, there is natural alignment or gravitation—each team member plays a more specialized role more often than not, like Analyst, Developer, or Tester. […]

The story-focused Daily Scrum

We are all familiar with the standard Daily Scrum, or Daily Standup, template, where the team gathers around the story card wall or Kanban board and each individual shares what they did yesterday, what they will do today, and what help they may need in order to accomplish their daily goal. This is an effective way […]

Is your team getting value from its Sprint Retro?

Does your team feel like their Sprint Retrospective is a value add activity? I’ve heard from team members that the Retro isn’t a good use of their time, or that its just a checklist item—something that has to be done. Sometimes I observe team members arrive late, or spend time working on their computer or phone, […]

Using Scrum as a framework to have better one-on-one meetings with your manager or mentor

One-on-one (1:1) meetings—do you set them up each month, or does your manager? Do you look forward to having a good development conversation with your manager or mentor, or are you trying to find something to say for the next 30 minutes? Think of your regular one-on-one meeting with your manager or your mentor as a […]

Efficient acceptance tests are all that’s required

On the teams where I have worked, a common topic during Sprint Retrospectives is what exactly should be included in the acceptance tests for each user story. How does the Analyst best communicate to the team how the software should behave? How will the Tester know what tests to execute? I really like the joke […]