What To Do When Your Team Can’t Finish its Sprint

Having a Team that just can’t finish what it agreed to do in a Sprint is, by far, one of the more painful situations we have in Scrum. This situation may make the Team Members feel bad about themselves, and they may want to do these Stories no matter what…

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Agile Consulting: A Tale of Two Risks

My work as an Agile Consultant comes in many shapes and sizes. In this consultant role, I work on the skills and standards needed for my clients to be proficient in their line of work. On this particular occasion, I was working with a client (we’ll call this client Acme Marketing and Technology) who delivers technology and marketing services in a Scrum/Agile-like manner…

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5 Tips to Prevent Technical Debt

5 Tips to Prevent Technical Debt: It’s a given. Technical Debt kills a Team’s code. So, what can the Team do about it? How can the Team prevent the development of Technical Debt from creeping into its code? Here’s 5 Ways to get your Team on the right track to preventing Technical Debt.

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The 4 Types of Technical Debt

The 4 Types of Technical Debt
Technically speaking (pun intended), we can define Technical Debt as deficiencies in the code, technical documentation, development environments, 3rd-party tools and development practices, which makes the code hard for the Team to change.

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When a Team Can’t Reach Their Sprint Goal

One of the most common issues that arises with a Scrum Team is that the content of a Sprint needs to change during the Sprint. This happens for a number of reasons, and this excerpt will touch on one reason this may occur: The team can’t do what it agreed to.

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Technical Debt: A Horror Story

This is an excerpt from Dan Rawsthorne’s upcoming book “Project Management with Scrum”. Dan is a Certified Scrum Trainer for 3Back, a world-leader in Scrum development, and co-author of “Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals”. This excerpt will give you a basic understanding of technical debt as well as a glimpse into an real-world example of technical debt overwhelming a team.

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Acceptance-Based Stories and Ideal Effort

This is an excerpt from the recently released second edition of Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals by Dan Rawsthorne and Doug Shimp.  The authors of “Exploring Scrum” are both Certified Scrum Trainers for 3Back, a world-leader in Scrum development.  There is no accepted definition of what a StoryPoint represents, other than that it is a unitless, relative…

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