Luis Gonçalves's Blog, page 11
November 14, 2014
21 Mandatory Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives
In this blog post I present 10 Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives. These tools are very useful for any team that is not co-located.
The post 21 Mandatory Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Agile Coach.
10 Mandatory Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives
In this blog post I present 10 Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives. These tools are very useful for any team that is not co-located.
The post 10 Mandatory Tools for Distributed Agile Retrospectives appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
How to improve teamwork in your agile team
This blog post explains how can you improve teamwork in your Agile Team. This can be used as agenda for a team building day offsite.
The post How to improve teamwork in your agile team appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
November 9, 2014
How to build trust with remote teams
This blog post explain several examples how companies can help their teams to build trust
The post How to build trust with remote teams appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
November 2, 2014
16 simple ways to explain what an Agile Retrospective is
This blog post presents several ways to explain what an Agile Retrospective is and what is the value to run it.
The post 16 simple ways to explain what an Agile Retrospective is appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
October 26, 2014
100+ Top Agile Blogs
This blog post describes a list of 100+ Agile blogs that you can find on the internet. This list is ordered based in Alexa.com ranking. Hope you like
The post 100+ Top Agile Blogs appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
100 Top Agile Blogs
This blog post describes a list of 100+ Agile blogs that you can find on the internet. This list is ordered based in Alexa.com ranking. Hope you like
The post 100 Top Agile Blogs appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
October 19, 2014
MVP – Getting money without a released product
This blog post explain how people can start to generate income having just a small MVP. People do not even need to have the product ready and live.
The post MVP – Getting money without a released product appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
October 12, 2014
Scrum Master job description
Some time ago I posted a couple of blog posts about Scrum Master/Agile Coaching recruiting, in those blogs I wrote some ideas how you could interview the candidates, this blogs can be found here. In this blog I will post a possible Scrum Master job description. I believe this is quite useful for everyone that is looking for ideas how to write this kind of job description.
I want to highlight the fact that it was not me who created this description. The original description can be found here. I removed some of lines that I do not agree. Hope you enjoy.
Essential Duties:
Guiding the team and organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values to delight customers
Guiding the team on how to get the most of out self organization
Guiding the team on self organizing to fill in the intentional gaps left in the Agile/Scrum frameworks
Assessing the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization
Removing impediments or guiding the team to remove impediments by finding the right personnel to remove the impediment.
Building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis of healing and problem solving.
Facilitating getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work.
Facilitating discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution
Assisting with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information
Supporting and educating the Product Owner, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog.
Providing all support to the team using a servant leadership style whenever possible, and leading by example
Required Skills/Experience:
Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least one year for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory. (Adjust based on your necessity)
Good skills and knowledge of servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency
Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc)
Preferred Skills/Experience (Any of these is a plus):
Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least two years for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory. (Adjust based on your necessity)
Knowledge of other Agile approaches: XP, Kanban, Crystal, FDD, etc
Knowledge and/or experience with widely successful Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games
Applicable knowledge of the technologies used by the team
Experience applying a wide variety of well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs,etc)
Previous experience as a team lead
Excellent communication and mentoring skills
Some other things you(the job poster) might want to fill in:
Required education level
Required software product development experience (I don’t recommend picking a particular development role — just general software development experience)
Any other things that you feel are important to your project, company, or team culture
Cheers,
Luis
The post Scrum Master job description appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
October 5, 2014
15 items to include in your Definition of Done (DoD)
When I join a team, one of the most common exercises that I help the team with is the Definition of Done (DoD). Wikipedia defines Definition of Done (DoD) as follows:
“The exit-criteria to determine whether a product backlog item is complete. In many cases the DoD requires that all regression tests should be successful. The definition of “done” may vary from one Scrum team to another, but must be consistent within one team.”
The original page can be reached here.
I like to help the team to come up with their own Definition of Done (DoD), but in the end I like to challenge their DoD, making them think a bit ;)
Below I am listing 15 items that you might or might not want to include on your DoD. Some of these items are more challenging than others, but this is just a basic list of ideas that can help you to define your own DoD, a general guideline; feel free to pick and choose those that best apply to your own situation.
X% of code coverage from Unit Test
Automated tests for the User Story are created and pass
Acceptance criteria is met
All regression testing of the product is passing
System-level Non-Functional requirements ( e.g. System-level performance) tested and passed
Software is running in the The server to be defined by the team (optimally in pre-production)
Code review by peer
Technical documentation updated
User documentation updated
User Documentation is localised
Localisation for the story is done
Localisation testing is done
Marketing input is done
Legal documents are done
Beta Testing is done
If you liked these questions and want to receive other tips, subscribe to the mailing list. I promise to deliver only high-quality content.
Cheers,
Luis
The post 15 items to include in your Definition of Done (DoD) appeared first on Luis Gonçalves - Blog.
