If story points are an estimate of the time (effort) involved in doing something, why not just estimate directly in hours or days? Why use points at all? There are multiple good reasons to estimate…
Story points are about time. There, I’ve said it, and can’t be more clear than that. I’ve written previously about why story points are about effort, not complexity. But I want to…
A common misconception is that everyone on a Scrum team must be a generalist—equally good at all technologies and disciplines, rather than a specialist in one. .
In 2001, author Ray Bradbury gave a talk at the annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea in San Diego. Fortunately for those of us who were not there, his speech was video recorded and is available.…
On the first day of my Certified ScrumMaster course, we go over the agenda for the two days. I point out that one topic we’ll cover will be “meetings.” I usually point out that Scrum…
I think I’d like to buy a big-screen plasma television. And maybe after that, a new amplifier for my home theater. I’ve also noticed that our home dishwasher doesn’t dry as well as…
I've been playing a fair amount of Go lately. If you're not familiar with Go, it's a strategy game that originated in China 2,500 years ago. It's along the lines of chess, but it's…
When writing user stories there are, of course, two parts: user and story. The user is embedded right at the front of stories when using the most common form of writing user stories: As a I so that .…
Yes, I really did refer to guitarist Alvin Lee in a Certified Scrum Product Owner class last week. Here's why. I was making a point that Scrum teams should strive to go as fast as they can without…
It's May, and we're well into spring now. If you're like me, you haven't yet done your annual spring cleaning. But I'll do mine this week, if you promise to also do yours. The type…
