Category: project

Project teams are not teams

May 12, 2009 by Mendelt Siebenga

I want you to do a little experiment. First search for the word 'team' on this site. By the time I wrote this article I got 325 results but that might be more now. Now click on the team tag right between 'TDD' and 'template' in the tag-list, only 26 articles are actually about teams.

What are teams?
Many books and articles are written about team-roles, team-size, team-self-organization or team-cross-functionality to name a few. One of the prerequisites is always stable teams, for many of the agile thought leaders the existence of teams is self evident, it's hardly ever talked about. Unfortunately many organizations do not really have teams. They assign people to projects instead.

Velocity: Measuring and Planning an Agile Project

December 10, 2007 by Jeremy Weiskotten

Bridgekeeper: “What is the velocity of an unladen swallow?”
King Arthur: “An African or European swallow?”
Bridgekeeper: “Huh? I don’t know that…”

- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

One of the most important metrics of an Agile team is its velocity. (No, you don't have to give the receptionist a stopwatch and do laps around your office.) In project management terms, velocity is the amount of work that a team can complete in a specified period of time.