Requirements and practices

Stuck in the backlogs and planning meetings? Here is a list of essays and articles on Agile tools, practices and concepts.

This list is dynamic and is updated frequently.

Agile Requirements

• Epics and Themes – Clarification of terms
• Six Features of a Good User Story - INVEST Model
• Six features of a good user story - INVEST model renewed
• When, How and Why Definition of Done Should Be Extended
• "I know it doesn't work but it's done" - a story about the definition of done
• Product backlog – Description and examples
• Conditions of satisfaction – How to help developers understand what customer wants
• Measures of size – Sizing the requirements
• Kano model of customer satisfaction – A series of posts on prioritizing the requirements

Also have a look at the other articles tagged with the “requirements” tag

Practices for working with the product backlog

• Prioritizing the Product Backlog – Sample procedure
• Filling the Product Backlog: Go For Excitement – Sample way of stocking the initial product backlog
• Creating the Scrum Product Backlog: Start with the Users! – Preparations for stocking the initial product backlog
• Kano model of customer satisfaction – A series of posts on prioritizing the requirements
• Burn Your Burn-down Charts – Alternatives to the canonical burndown charts
• Many Backlogs for a Single Scrum Team -  Pros and cons

Also have a look at the other articles tagged with the “product backlog” tag

Project management

• How to do many projects: with Few People, with Matrix Management, Maintenance, Resource Planning
• How to Handle Many Simultaneous Projects – Experience of a company that specializes on running many small projects simultaneously
• 10 Principles of Agile Project Time Management – Tips and reasons
• Agile Risk Management – Are agile methods strong enough on the risk management side?
• Risk analysis in agile methods – General approach
• How agile has to kill projects – When canceling a project is profitable
• Lowest defect rates - faster schedules – Statistical proofs

Also have a look at the other articles tagged with the “project management” tag

Practices and procedures

• Scrum process overview: schedule
• Extreme Programming - Values, principles and practices
• Sample Sprint Planning Procedure – How you actually do it
• 7 Tips for Improving the Daily Scrum – Making the daily standup serve you better
• Daily Scrum - the feeling of synchronization – Purpose of the meeting
• Predicting the team's Velocity: yesterday's weather method – Way of estimating the team progress
• Pair programming. What researches say on the costs and benefits of the practice – Summary of the research articles
• Five risks of solo programming – Pair programming is good? Solo programming is just too risky
• Maintenance victims - Handling maintenance the Agile way – What to do if maintenance is killing the motivation
• What does it mean to reject sprint content? – Reasons and consequences
• Product owner on retrospectives – When it makes sense
• Pros and cons of short iterations 
• Q & A sprints – Special iterations for raising the quality level

Distributed development

• How to Survive Multi-Continent Daily Scrums – Tips for running the distributed daily meetings
• Distributed Development: How important is face-to-face interaction? – India-based experience
• Distributed Agile Development - 2: Managing daily Scrums – Tips for running the distributed daily meetings
• Secret sauce of offshoring and distribution - summary of Scan-Agile open space session

Also have a look at the other articles tagged with the “distributed” tag

Contracts and project initiation

• Finding a Partner to Trust - Using Scrum to Create an Agile RFP
• Finding a Partner to Trust - Writing an Agile RFP to Outsource a SW Development Projects
• Finding a Partner to Trust - Using Competitive Sprints to Select an Agile Software Vendor
• How to get your agile project approved – Preparing the project start
• The Big Development Project: How much should it cost? – Double Worst Case Analysis method
• Five steps for starting the Scrum project – They way that works for many organizations
• Why no fixed contracts in Agile – Reason and further links
• How to use agile methods for the fixed price contracts – What to do if you do need to work on a fixed price contract

Also have a look at the other articles tagged with the “contract” tag

Tools

• Simple Product Backlog Example – Simplest possible example in Excel
• Video tutorial: Managing your Scrum Product Backlog with the help of a simple Excel sheet
• Simple Sprint Backlog Example – Simplest possible example in Excel
• Video tutorial: Managing your Sprint Backlog with the help of a simple Excel sheet
• Scrum backlog templates and examples – A collection of Excel templates and examples
• Scrum/Agile Tools: Quick Look at GreenHopper – A Jira based Scrum tool

Also have a look at all the articles tagged with the “tool” tag

Misc

• Agile Software Development one pager – Most important things in Agile on a single pahe
• Waterfall - Agile team cooperation 
• Layered Transparency – Three levels of transparency on the Agile projects

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