Protecting the Team Cuts Both Ways

by Mike Cohn, 26 July 2011 | Agile Teams

It is a generally accepted Scrum dictum that one of the ScrumMaster’s duties is to protect the team. The usual example is that the ScrumMaster must protect the team from an overly aggressive product owner. There is nothing wrong with this example and many teams do need to be protected from a product owner whose desire for more functionality can push the team into cutting quality corners. However,...
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A Sample Format for a Spreadsheet-Based Product Backlog

I want to show a real easy way to put user stories in a spreadsheet-based product backlog. I wrote this after seeing someone tweet a screen capture of a product backlog I made 9 years...
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Estimating Non-Functional Requirements

by Mike Cohn, 19 June 2011
Agile Estimating

A few weeks back I promised someone I would blog about the unique challenges of estimating non-functional requirements. First, let’s remember that a non-functional requirement...
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Time as a Competitive Advantage

by Mike Cohn, 5 June 2011
Agile Adoption

An article I read in 1988 has always stuck with me. The article was “Time–The Next Source of Competitive Advantage” by George Stalk in the Harvard Business Review. The article...
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A New Artifact – The Long-Term Product Backlog

by Mike Cohn, 6 May 2011
Agile Planning

The weather turned nice about two weeks ago, which meant it was time for spring cleaning about the Cohn home, affectionately known as the Cohnderosa (which will only mean something...
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In Defense of Making Hard Changes

I’ve read a number of articles lately that make the claim that Kanban is better than Scrum because it doesn’t require a great deal of organizational change. I first came across...
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Reflections on the 10 Years Since the Agile Manifesto

by Mike Cohn, 11 February 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

Today is the tenth anniversary of the start of the meeting that resulted in the Agile Manifesto. Much has changed in the ten years since the Agile Manifesto. Back then, the processes...
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Deciding What Kind of Projects are Most Suited for Agile

by Mike Cohn, 16 January 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

I was recently asked what kind of project is most suited for an agile approach and I’d like to address that here. In my view, the most appropriate projects for agile are ones with...
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5 Free Agile & Scrum Tools for Project Planning and Prioritizing

by Mike Cohn, 6 January 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

Mountain Goat Software and Mike Cohn, author and Agile Scrum expert, have announced the release of four free tools used in agile and scrum projects for planning and prioritizing. Layfayette,...
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Announcing an upcoming PMI Webinar

by Mike Cohn, 11 December 2010
The Agile Blogosphere

I’ve been invited by the PMI Agile Community of Practice to present a webinar. It will be held on February 15, 2011 at noon Eastern time and will last one hour. The topic is “The...
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Scrum Alliance Update

by Mike Cohn, 21 November 2010
The Agile Blogosphere

By now you may have heard that I am the new chairman of the board for the Scrum Alliance. Esther Derby, Ken Schwaber and I cofounded the Scrum Alliance a handful of years ago and it’s...
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Should Story Points Be Assigned to A Bug-Fixing Story

by Mike Cohn, 14 November 2010
The Agile Blogosphere

When migrating a product from a traditional approach to an agile one, teams commonly bring along a large database of bugs. These are the result of an inadequate focus on continuously...
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Avast Combining the ScrumMaster and Product Owner, Matey!

by Mike Cohn, 10 October 2010
The Agile Blogosphere

A common question is whether it’s acceptable to combine the role of product and ScrumMaster and give both sets of responsibilities to a single person. In general, combining these...
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