Flow Archives

Continuous Deployment

The Sprint Increment Is Dead

The Sprint Increment Got Us Here

If you’re a veteran of the software industry, you probably remember those days when we released to production/GA every couple of months. Heck, many of the companies I meet these days still work that way.

If you’re also an experienced Scrum practitioner, you probably associate the time you started to use Scrum with the time you started to release more frequently. The Sprint Increment that had to be potentially releasable caused you a lot of pain as you were trying to improve your processes and capabilities, implement Continuous Integration, and finally gain the ability to actually have a releasable Increment each Sprint. You were pretty proud.

Flow

Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) – some anecdotes worth thinking about when using Kanban with Scrum

Co-Creating and teaching the new Scrum.org Professional Scrum with Kanban class has given me an opportunity to get back to geeking out on WIP limits, flow metrics and all things Kanban. And it’s been fun!

Agile KPIs

4 Key Flow Metrics and how to use them in Scrum’s events

In the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the Professional Scrum with Kanban workshop, we introduce 4 key flow metrics that we believe Scrum teams

Agile Tools

Seeing The Big Picture With Scrum

A common phenomenon happening in organizations implementing scrum is that something is missing – the big picture. People are saying “We used to have High-Level Designs – where are they?”, “We used to have an architecture before developing – where is it?”. The answer will usually be that as we are working with small batches we need to focus on what’s immediately coming up and so other things are getting neglected.

But this is a confusion. Nothing should be neglected. For sure we cannot neglect long-term thinking and planning.

Agile Mindset

Develop it when it’s ripe

We need good metaphors to better understand software development. Good metaphors from our day to day can help us better understand this elusive domain.

Some time ago I wrote about traffic and not long ago I wrote about handling scope the same way you would handle a growing garden. In this short article, I would like to discuss the great opportunity for a better understanding of software development, hidden in fruits. Yes, fruits.

Agile Mindset

The Critical Difference Between Backlog and To Do (Kanban, Scrum)

When we build a kanban board to manage our work (either practicing Kanban or Scrum) we usually create a Backlog list (usually the first column) and a To Do list (following the Backlog). I’ve noticed that many times the separation between the two is artificial and people don’t always understand the critical difference between the two. I’d like to discuss it here.

Flow

Avoiding Over Utilization Field Trip

Reinersten’s Book The Principles of Product Development Flow) that when you avoid overutilization (that is, use less than 100% capacity) a system (like a road or a scrum team) that handles items with variation (like cars or stories for software) you get better cycle time – that is, items flow faster through the system.

Flow

Why “Cost of Delay”?

Don Reinerstern in his book “The Principles of Product Development Flow” writes about the importance of having an economic view when making decisions. This is because we are usually developing products to improve our financial standing (and even if it is not for “making money” but rather for nobler reasons, still there is the economic view).

Agile Israel

Techniques and experiences for managing end to end Releases/Projects/Programs using Kanban and Flow

Kanban is a powerful and flexible system. One of the popular emerging ways of using it is to create and manage product development flow. Whether for a single project, a program, or a portfolio, we will explore the need for product development flow, see how kanban fulfills this need in a couple of examples from real clients, and discuss the next frontiers for program management flow.