About Me
Assaf Stone
My name is Assaf Stone. I'm a senior ALM consultant in Microsoft's Premier Support for Developers Team. When not being kept busy by work, my wife, or my four kids, I like to practice archery, read books, and listen to 70's and 80's rock music. I would also like to just relax, if I had any more spare time!
Category Archives: Agile
Sprint Zero Considered Harmful!
Many development teams, especially those who are new to Scrum, or those trying to bring some level of agility to an otherwise conservative waterfall organization, struggle with their first attempts at adopting a truly agile approach. This is particularly true … Continue reading
Posted in Agile, Delivery, Scrum, Sprint Planning
Tagged Agile, Growth Mindset, Learning, Scrum, Sprint
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DevOps and Your Definition of Done
Regardless of the agile methodology you are using to drive your software development efforts, you should have an explicit definition of done. I say explicitly, because you will always have one – whether you define it or not. Regardless of … Continue reading
Posted in Agile, Definition of Done, DevOps, Scrum
Tagged Agile, Definition of Done, DevOps, Retrospective, Scrum
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How to Maximize the Value of Your Planning Session
By now it is commonly accepted that the old way of developing software, in silos, with a big up front plan and design, with only a single true delivery to customers at the end of the project, also knows as … Continue reading
Posted in Agile, Definition of Done, How To, Scrum, Sprint Planning, User Story
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WIP Your Product into Shape
What is WIP? WIP simply means work in process (also sometimes, Work In Progress). This metric simply measures how many items (features, stories, backlog items, tasks) your team have started to develop, but have yet to complete. In other words, … Continue reading
Posted in Agile, Productivity, Scrum, Self Management, Team, Uncategorized, VSTS
Tagged Agile, DevOps, Kanban, Lean, Scrum, Team, VSTS
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5 Ways to Reduce the Impact of Failure
In the previous post we discussed risk management, how many of us manage it today by attempting to control the likelihood of failure, and why we should instead focus on reducing the impact of failures, as a way to manage … Continue reading
Risk: You’re Managing it Wrong!
No offense, but despite your best intentions, you might not be handling risk properly. In this day and age, everything is software-dependent; even if you do not consider yourself a “software-firm” per-se, even if you are just running a small … Continue reading
How to Track Impediments in VSTS
Note: While this post discusses impediments in VSTS, everything mentioned can be applied to TFS as well. Visual Studio Team Services (or VSTS) has great tools to support Scrum teams. The product owner can use the backlog and board to … Continue reading
Posted in Agile, How To, Productivity, Scrum, VSTS
Tagged Agile, Impediments, Scrum, Scrum Master, TFS, VSTS
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Scaling Scrum with Nexus in VSTS
In this post, I will cover what Scrum Nexus is, where, when, and why you would want to use it, and how to set up VSTS best to accommodate your Scrum practices. As VSTS’s tooling is not yet perfect for … Continue reading
Posted in Agile, Scrum, Team, User Story, VSTS
Tagged Agile, Nexus, PBI, Scrum, Team, User Story, VSTS
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