The Starfish Retrospective is a highly practical sprint retrospective format that helps teams move beyond “what went well” and “what didn’t” into specific, actionable improvements. It is especially useful when you want the team to think in terms of keep, stop, start, more of, and less of so the discussion turns directly into behavior change. The Starfish Retrospective
A Mad Sad Glad retrospective is a simple and effective way for teams to reflect on their previous sprint. It involves identifying things that made the team feel happy, things that made them feel sad, and things that made them feel angry or frustrated. By focusing on these three areas, the team can identify what
The Start Stop and Continue format is a simple, action‑oriented sprint retrospective technique that helps Scrum teams reflect on what is working, what is not, and what they want to change in the next iteration. It structures the conversation around three categories—things to start doing, stop doing, and continue doing—so teams leave the meeting with a concrete, prioritized improvement plan rather than a
Product Backlog Refinement consists of Creating & Refining User Stories, Estimating User Stories & Product Backlog Prioritization. It is the act of adding detail, estimates, and orders to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Scrum Team collaborate on the details of the Product Backlog,
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Many teams use the Definition of Done (DoD) to check if a user story is finished and the product is ready to be delivered. But what about the user stories that a team receives from their product owner? Teams can check the quality of the user stories using a Definition of Ready. While the value
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Definition of Ready is a set of agreements that let you know when a user story is really done, the team makes explicit and visible the criteria (generally based on the INVEST matrix) that a user story must meet prior to being accepted into the upcoming iteration. The Definition of Ready is a different concept. It is a set of
Definition of Done is an agreement between Development Team and the Product Owner on what needs to be completed for each user story so that it can be satisfactorily verified and validated – usually in the form of a clear and concise list of acceptance criteria that a software Increment must adhere to for the
3C’s is an Effective User Story technique. 3Cs: Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. The Card is the index card that the User Story is written on. The index card format serves two purposes: To write requirements on index cards, each requirement has to be small and self-contained; this helps us focus on what we need to do for
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INVEST, DEEP , SMART & Three C’s are Effective User Story Techniques. INVEST is a useful mnemonic established by Bill Wake in Extreme Programming Explored. It can be used to inspect the quality of your user story by validating it against each of the following (in Bill Wake’s words): Effective User Story Techniques – INVEST Independent – Each User
Effective User Story Techniques INVEST DEEP SMART 3Cs Read More »
Daily Scrum Anti Patterns are habits that are frequently exhibited but overall ineffective counterproductive in practice or maybe even harmful. Scrum stakeholder anti-patterns result from a training and coaching void accompanied by not changing individual career objectives. “Scrum is like your mother-in-law. It’s constantly pointing out your shortcomings.” — Ken Schwaber Daily Scrum Anti Patterns
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Planning Poker is a consensus-based technique for estimation, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software product development. Planning Poker is done with story points, ideal days, or any other estimating units. The Scrum Master, Product Owner, and the development team participate in Planning Poker activity. Purpose: Estimate the effort
A user story describes how the user will use the software in just a few sentences. User stories can be used to represent a new feature, an enhancement to an existing feature, a technical task (like a nonfunctional requirement), or a defect unearthed during testing. As a < type of user >, I want <
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Studying and Dissecting a problem to identify the root cause is called Fact Based Analysis. It also evaluates potential solutions to ensure it is being implemented in the most beneficial way. Below mentioned techniques can be applied during Sprint Retrospectives. The problem-solving process in fact based analysis has six steps: Define the problem Analyze the problem
RAID Analysis is an acronym for Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies. All projects large and small have risks, issues, dependencies, and assumptions. Managing them is one of the most time-consuming activities but done well, the effort is paid off by fewer delays and cost over-runs, better-informed stakeholders, more support for the project, and better delivery
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Daily Scrum (Daily Stand Up or DSU) is a reoccurring event to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work. Daily Scrum provides at least one daily opportunity to synchronize work and plan for the day ahead. The Scrum Master ensures that a Daily Scrum
Sprint Planning meeting is conducted before the start of a sprint. The purpose of this meeting is to determine the sprint plan and set a sprint goal. This meeting is split into two sessions. In the first session, the product owner reviews the list of features and defines what needs to be built during the
Agile certifications assist professional to improve delivery predictability and accelerate software delivery. Methods and Principles of Agile not only helps in cutting down the overall cost of a project but also helps in reducing rework. Agile has matured now and similar to other domains like Project Management. This is the reason why agile professionals aspire
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Scrum Cheatsheet: Scrum is a term from RUGBY. It is an ordered formation of players, used to restart play, in which the forwards of a team form up with arms interlocked and heads down, and push forward against a similar group from the opposing side. The ball is thrown into the scrum and the players try
Product Backlog Refinement or Grooming is an exercise out of which a prioritized list of work emerged. It consists of Creating & Refining User Stories, Estimating User Stories & Product Backlog Prioritization. Product Backlog is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. This is for the development team
Sprint Retrospective is a short meeting for project teams to reflect on the most recent stage of their project, analyze their processes, and identify things they can do better moving forward. Regular agile retrospective meetings support constant learning and improvement over the life cycle of the project. Start Stop and Continue Sprint Retrospective Glad-Sad-Mad Sprint
W. Edwards Deming in the 1950’s proposed that business processes should be analyzed and measured to identify sources of variations that cause products to deviate from customer requirements. The Deming cycle is a continuous quality improvement model which consists of a logical sequence of four key stages: Plan, Do, Study, and Act. Plan, Do, Study,
The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 by seventeen independent-minded software practitioners. While the participants didn’t often agree, they did find consensus around four core values. The purpose is to give a new way of developing software “by doing it and helping others do it”. Agile Core Values Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. Working Software over Comprehensive
