Nice click bait isn't it? Bare with me and I shall help you see that this might really not be the case. I always found explaining the concept of Story Points difficult. First of all, if you go to the creators of Extreme Programming and Story Points: Kent Beck and Martin Fowler, you find very little information in their books and if any, then not really helpful i.e. concept of 'ideal dev weeks' or blunt 'You can't put ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag'. When you are experimenting and showing how the team could decouple from using time-based estimates, you feel there is something wrong. Otherwise than that, you find articles all over the web titled 'Story Points are Effort', 'Story Points
Whether you are software developer, quality engineer, user experience designer, product owner or an agile coach, you probably take notes and a lot of them. If for some reason you do not make any notes, you should start immediately. Taking notes removes the burden of remembering things, dates, facts, tasks and lists. Make your life a bit easier and unleash at the same time the power of your brain where it matters the most: thinking. I have tested a few ways through the last couple of years. At first, there was a calendar. This is a natural choice since you will be given one branded with your company's logo. I started scheduling out every single minute of my time and making sure every task is on
In March 2017, I was keen to learn about Design Sprints. I went as far as going to London for Mind The Product workshop and experience the framework during 8 hours long intensive day myself. Mind The Product is a widely known conference among product people. It features Product Managers from companies like Google Ventures, Facebook, Pinterest and many more and has it's home in both London and San Francisco: the two important hubs of digital innovation. Only during a workshop one can actually learn the intricacies of a framework and tricks that help the facilitator to apply it well within his context. Reading a book is not enough, though a good starting point. There are two, which cover the topic. I have already introduced you
What are Design Sprints? I did not know that, either. Until I read the book Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five day by Jake Knapp of Google Ventures (GV). By the way, if you happen to know me, please send me an email request and you will get one (yeah, it is 100% legal). Still, to know something and do something these are completely two different skill sets. I knew that in order to grasp the whole idea I would need to participate in one. There it was, I was looking at a great opportunity, the workshop's agenda for Mind The Product conference in London. C. Todd Lombardo, one of the co-authors of "Design Sprint" book, was organizing a
Recently, I have been given a task to visualize a successful implementation of Scrum with a special emphasis on Product Organization within the company. It was a part of a larger interview process for an Agile Coach role. Here is what I came up with: Two tracks to rule your company There are two tracks on which your company rides. The metaphor here is that it is a train with a magnetic drive (we are in XXI century and build products with modern technology, right?). However, should one track fail it will come to a complete halt. It is rather obvious that failing at Product Delivery Track will stop the progress at your company, be it measured in money earned or innovations that it brings to
