Category Archives: hands-on

Not long ago, a software performance architect brought to my attention that she and her colleague (the performance-testing team) were overloaded with performance-testing requests from product teams. The performance testers wondered if they needed to change their mini-team’s process to … Continue reading →

Continuing the statistical theme of the last two posts, but trying to close it at the same time. I observe three different levels of dealing with the same problem: look at a data set of some metric and tell whether … Continue reading →

In my previous post, I referred to the insight (created by experts who have analyzed lots of real-world software and IT project data) that lead times in such projects often have the Weibull distribution. I also explained a bit what … Continue reading →

A colleague sent a link to an article to a group of colleagues and ask for a comment. The article was published in one of the popular online IT magazines. My goal here is not to criticize or fix this … Continue reading →

I was at Agile Open Toronto last weekend, which included a no-estimates session. That session and the open-space conference itself deserve separate blog posts, but for now I want to cover just set of concerns that relates to sizing and … Continue reading →

I have recently had a discussion with a Scrum Master whose team was struggling quite a bit, completing exactly zero stories for two straight iterations. This problem is often framed as overcommitment – how can we make them team commit … Continue reading →

The Pragmatic Bookshelf has recently published an article by Ron Jeffries, Estimation is Evil. I didn’t enjoy it for a number of reasons. The word evil turns the article into a religious argument and sensationalizes it needlessly. I would have … Continue reading →

My last post, On WIP Limits, Velocity and Variability, explained how variability can combine with certain habits and the ignorance of pull systems to create a situation where a Scrum team repeatedly delivers roughly half of their user stories committed … Continue reading →

A prominent agilist posted a question on Twitter that lead to a long discussion: “Can Scrum teams use velocity as the WIP limit for a sprint? Will it take them closer to pull-based planning?” Several replies quickly followed from many … Continue reading →