Estimating stories in days has always been notoriously inaccurate. So agile invented estimating stories in “points” and everyone gave a sigh of relief. Except there were two big problems… Problem #1: Urgency In an ideal world, no work is urgent. In the real world, plenty of work is urgent. On our team, for example, Coronavirus…… Continue reading Better Estimates
Category: Agile
Prioritising stories, but not as you know it
Agile places great importance on the “early and continuous delivery of valuable software”. But somehow, when it comes to estimating stories, teams estimate effort instead of value. Estimating can be a time consuming process. What if we flipped estimating stories? What if… instead of developers estimating the effort, the product owner estimated the value (instead…… Continue reading Prioritising stories, but not as you know it
Why documentation is over-rated
The Agile Manifesto says “we value working software over comprehensive documentation”. People often over-rate the value of documentation. Why? There are five common assumptions: People will look for the documentation People will find and read the documentation The documentation is up-to-date People will understand the documentation People will act on and not dismiss it Documentation…… Continue reading Why documentation is over-rated
Estimates: Fibonacci vs exponential scale
Many teams estimate story points using the Fibonacci scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8). What if we used an exponential scale? I prefer days to points so it could look like: 1 day, 2-3 days, 1 week, 2-3 weeks, 1-2 months.
Better standups
The classic daily standup has everyone answer three questions: What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? What is blocking you? This format often falls flat. A developer talks about what they worked on yesterday while half the team glaze over. A developer talks about what they did yesterday even though it has…… Continue reading Better standups
The inventor of story points apologises for it
Ron Jeffries, the inventor of story points, says “I like to say that I may have invented story points, and if I did, I’m sorry now”. What’s so bad about estimating with story points? The problem is that it’s very difficult to know if your estimate is accurate or not. And it’s very difficult to…… Continue reading The inventor of story points apologises for it
User Stories vs Real Stories
Lots of product teams use “User Stories”. They have a particular format, like this… As a user, i want to search for products, so that i can quickly find what i want. To any normal person, this may be called a “story” but it obviously isn’t a real story, a story that’s engaging. It’s missing…… Continue reading User Stories vs Real Stories
Give your team superpowers with this awesome team board
Superpowers happen when a team combines three key ingredients: a laser focus, deep collaboration and “user-centricity”. Zenboard is a new team board that makes all of this easier. (Demo here). The grid is based on the physical team boards popularised by Scrum. The flexible rows make it really powerful. (Sorry JIRA, you’re row are too…… Continue reading Give your team superpowers with this awesome team board
Product development: the power of NO
The power of NO Successful leaders understand the importance of saying no. Steve Jobs said, “Success comes from saying no to 1000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.” It’s echoed in this great video by Spotify guru Henrik Kniberg, “No is the most important…… Continue reading Product development: the power of NO
What the hell is a sprint?
First some context. The media landscape is constantly changing. Metro has to adapt faster than it’s competitors. The good news: Metro has so many ideas about how to grow! The bad news: the law of competition states that most new ideas will flop 🙁 A true story. In 2011, Metro’s Head of Digital has us…… Continue reading What the hell is a sprint?
Why we love the 80/20 rule
At Metro, we love the 80/20 rule. We do the 20% of the work that gets 80% of the results. The 80/20 rule is 4 times more productive than the “100% rule”! Just in case it’s not clear why, the table below illustrates. Work done Output using 100% rule Output using 80/20 rule 20% Thing…… Continue reading Why we love the 80/20 rule