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The work will get done when it gets done.  Demanding that a new product, service or upgrade be completed by January 23, 2016 is just not helpful.  Arbitrary deadlines simply cause too much stress and anguish for everyone – developers, customers and managers.  The people...

Burndown charts are bad!  Burndown charts are abused by mangers!  We hate Burndown charts (and estimates!!), so let’s get rid of them all!  If you are hearing those words, or something similar, from the fire eaters in your office, they are probably right. While I like Burndown...

In Scrum, the best way to show progress is through working software.  If you do not produce software at the end of each Sprint, you are doing it wrong.  Progress is not shown through reports, documents, screenshots or charts. So what about a Burndown chart?  Can’t someone look at...

Happy New Year!  Last week, I reviewed the web traffic to get some insight on what visitors were searching for at Look Forward Consulting and I produced this top ten blog posts for 2014.  Enjoy! 14 Scrum Case Studies: case studies are always popular and this entry tops the list...

This question started an interesting exchange on the Scrum Development list at yahoo! The Scrum Guide states that a person can be “Team Member” and “Scrum  Master”, a “Team Member” and “Product Owner” but emphatically rules ou...

In Scrum, we use a lot of easy-to-understand tools to communicate status.  A very common tool is a burndown chart.  In this diagram, I am showing a sample Release Burndown chart for a Team with eight Sprints in their release and will talk about how this is commonly used on a...

Just wanted to post some pictures (sorry, they didn’t make the move – 01/31/2009 CEN) of the Team’s task board as yet another example for people who are curious about how this looks and feels. It is a very, low tech Team tool for talking about the work they are doing....