Tag Archives: Agile

Sprint Zero Considered Harmful!

Posted on February 9, 2020 by Assaf Stone

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 →

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DevOps and Your Definition of Done

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Assaf Stone

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 →

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WIP Your Product into Shape

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Assaf Stone

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 , , , , , , | Leave a comment

5 Ways to Reduce the Impact of Failure

Posted on December 28, 2017 by Assaf Stone

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 →

Posted in Agile, Change, Delivery, How To, Productivity, Release, Scrum, Software, Team | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Risk: You’re Managing it Wrong!

Posted on December 27, 2017 by Assaf Stone

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 →

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How to Track Impediments in VSTS

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Assaf Stone

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 , , , , , | 1 Comment

Scaling Scrum with Nexus in VSTS

Posted on June 8, 2017 by Assaf Stone

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 , , , , , , | 2 Comments