Packing The Box

Do you remember the last time you moved?  Do you remember packing some boxes so full, that they were too heavy to lift after you were done?  It happens.  Especially books and vinyl records.  When you are packing “regularly shaped” high density items, the volume of the box may be too large to contain the weight of the items.  Or it may be that the lifters (I mean you) may not have enough momentary work capacity (strength) to carry the box.Continue Reading

Team Behaviors

In my recent post on Optimum Iteration Length, I finished by saying that iteration size is not the cure for bad team behaviors, but shorter iteration size makes those behaviors more apparent.

This post is about how to counteract ineffective team behaviors, from my own experience:

There are three general diseases that have lots of different causes and lots of symptoms, but at the end of the day, they boil down to these three things:Continue Reading

Optimum Iteration Length

In recent months, I have had quite a few conversations with Agile teams, and one topic that comes up is how to decide on or why to adjust iteration length. When a team is adopting agile practices, they often ask “What is the best iteration length?”

Like everything else in software development, my answer is “That depends…” Depends on what? Depends on how your team “thinks”. Depends on how your team “plans”. Depends on how your team makes decisions. Depends on how your team writes or receives user stories.Continue Reading