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Focus on the Most Challenging Parts of Your Project We estimate to make decisions and to give an answer to the question, "When will this be done?" But estimation has limits, and trying to estimate too precisely in an agile project is wasteful. By driving the backlog based on priority, you can better deliver what is valuable to the business. |
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Meetings: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Meetings are a crucial part of the communication process, but they endure a lot of ridicule. You can’t do away with them entirely—meetings are essential to an agile process like Scrum. Rather than avoiding all meetings, it’s better to work at making the times you meet with people more effective. |
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Managers Are Still Good for Self-Organizing Agile Teams When teams self-organize to deliver software and solve problems, they can be more robust, effective, and directed. But this begs the question: If agile teams self-organize, do they really need managers? Yes, they do. Managers help create conditions that help teams thrive. Read on to find out how. |
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“So, How’s It Going?” Thoughts on Reporting Project Progress People near the top of your org chart often want project status updates to be short and sweet. But oversimplified measures risk miscommunication. Be thoughtful when someone asks, “So, how’s it going?” If you summarize too much, you can lose context, and these managers may feel misled later. |
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The Abstraction Problem As technical people, when we give too much information in a project status meeting, we can overwhelm managers. Worse, if we don’t answer the implied question ("When is this thing going to be done?"), the managers will get answers elsewhere. Read on for ideas to get you speaking the same language. |
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The Typical Project Over Time: A Long-Term Trends Report What does a typical software project look like, and how has what’s “typical” changed over time? QSM segmented more than 10,000 completed IT projects and looked at several software development metrics for each ten-year time period. |
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How Do Innovative Companies Run Their Meetings? How much do unproductive meetings cost? Approximately 11 million meetings happen in the US every day, and employees lose approximately four work days each month due to unproductive meetings. So what can some of the best run companies teach us about effectively running meetings? |
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What's in the Winter 2015 Issue of Better Software Magazine? Many of us spend more time (and money) beefing up our technical skills when we could use guidance on developing soft skills. The Winter 2015 issue of Better Software should have just what you need to overcome organizational roadblocks in your quest for agile nirvana. Read on to see what's in it. |
