O'Reilly Media - Tech Books, DRM-Free Ebooks, Videos
The high points in this book from Jeff Patton are too numerous to mention. I found myself taking copious notes, and you could do the same, but it would probably make more sense to keep it near you and dip into it regularly until you have fully digested it. It is filled with good quotes e.g. 'There's always more to build than you have people, time, or money for. Always.' Chapter 5 is a real gem - a real world example of how to map stories, and so down to earth that you carry it with you. It is a book that makes clear the rationale behind user stories i.e. it doesn't simply contain a description of: 'As a.. 'Stories get their name from how they should be used, not what should be written.' There is a breadth of experience here: the author brings together old ideas, 'card, collaboration, confirmation' with newer ideas such as the Lean Startup 'build, measure, learn'. This is an honest book and one that makes you think. Martin Rowe
Splitting User Stories - Agile For All
Working from a prioritized backlog of small user stories allows a team to get value and high-quality feedback on frequent intervals. Many teams struggle to split large user stories into small stories in a useful way. Instead of ending up with small vertical slices through their architecture, they get stories that look more like tasks or architectural components and fail to experience the value or feedback small stories should provide. Fortunately, story splitting is a skill that can be learned in a relatively short time. I’ve seen teams go from struggling to fluently splitting stories with just a couple hours of practice and some simple tools. To help you learn story splitting, I’ve provided some resources here. Patterns for Splitting User Stories is my original article that outlines 9 kinds of functional complexity in large stories and approaches to split through each one. I do story splitting somewhat differently depending on the complexity of the original story.
Disciplined Learning
Dr. Alistair CockurnHumans and Technology Technical Report TR-2013.01 Feb. 2013, ©2013 Alistair Cockburn alias: Learn Early, Learn Often alias: DAKA2 (and see also DAKA) The beautifully laid out PDF of this article, as prepared for CrossTalk Magazine, is available at: Apply Figure 1 and you have everything, including Lean Startups, Collaborative Agile Marketing, feature thinning, “Trim the Tail”, Deliberate Discovery and risk-based project management [ER, GW, AC-ft, AC-ttt, DN, W-rm]. Figure 1: Disciplined knowledge acquisition during product development Although Figure 1 shows the desired path of learning, most development and marketing looks more like Figure 2: Figure 2: The typical “late-learning” sequence of product development. To get acquainted with the idea, let’s first walk through Figure 2, the typical “late-learning” sequence: They need to learn four things: 1. #1 they learn along the way. Q1. to
Dual-Track Scrum
Posted by marty cagan on September 17, 2012 Tags: scrum, agile, product discovery When I first start working with an Agile product team, one of the most common situations I find is where the teams have long and frustrating Sprint planning meetings because backlog items are poorly defined and not well understood; they have slow velocity as well as poor design because details are still being worked out during the Sprint; and the amount of waste and rework is very high because backlog items have not been validated. Remember that our higher order objective is to validate our ideas the fastest, cheapest way possible. Actually building and launching a product idea is generally the slowest, most expensive way to validate the idea. Which is why I'm a big advocate for what is sometimes referred to as Dual-Track Scrum. The Discovery track is all about quickly generating validated product backlog items, and the Delivery track is all about generating releasable software.
The Soul of Design: Harnessing the Power of Plot to Create Extraordinary Products | Lee Devin and Robert D. Austin
What makes the Apple iPhone cool? Bang & Olufsen and Samsung's televisions beautiful? Any of a wide variety of products and services special? The answer is not simply functionality or technology, for competitors' products are often as good. The Soul of Design explores the uncanny power of some products to grab and hold attention—to create desire. Devin and Austin provide keys to understanding why some products and services stand out in a crowd and how the companies that make them create these hits. Readers will come away with a sensible and clear approach to conceiving of artful products and services. About the author Lee Devin is a Dramaturg at People's Light, an Emeritus professor of Theatre and Senior Research Scholar at Swarthmore College, a member of Actors' Equity, a Certified Scrum Master, and a Consultant for the Cutter Consortium Innovation Practice. Robert D. —BizEd "I love this book. —Fred Collopy, Case Western Reserve University and coeditor of Managing as Designing
The Agile Inception Deck | The Agile Warrior
Download Blank Inception Deck One area most agile methods are completely silent on is project chartering. Below is a lightweight you can use to fill this gap and get your project headed in the right direction long before the first line of code every gets written. 10 questions to ask at the start of your next project It starts out so hopefully. As you begin the project, you and your team are all on the same page. How many of your projects start off like this: You and your team get together at the start of your project thinking you are all on the same page? And when you start building something, you realize you were thinking something completely different. This happens all the time on projects: assuming there is consensus when none exists. While good teams can roll with these punches and adapt as they go, it’s a form of waste that can hurt or kill the unwary before they even get out of the gate. These questions serve two goals: alignment and expectation setting. Yes we can build that for you.
Energy Star Portfolio Manager
Use Portfolio Manager You’ve heard it before: you can’t manage what you don’t measure. That’s why EPA created ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager®, an online tool you can use to measure and track energy and water consumption, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Use it to benchmark the performance of one building or a whole portfolio of buildings, all in a secure online environment. Not sure if Portfolio Manager is for you? You can use Portfolio Manager to manage the energy and water use of any building. Are you designing a new commercial building? Join the rest of the industry. When you add your buildings, you’ll be joining 40 percent of U.S. commercial building space that’s already benchmarked in Portfolio Manager — making it the industry-leading benchmarking tool. It’s only growing. And it’s on the move. Use the links on the left and start managing your energy and water consumption today.
