Agile Bites

After 67 episodes, it's about time we talk about the MVP—Minimum Viable Product. There are a whole lot of conversations online about what an MVP is and what it isn't. We're not setting out to define it once and for all. Instead, we're taking you through the same process we go through with our clients in this special series about MVPs. And this first episode is all about the “what”...

We're covering the last assumption of Little's Law in this series, and this time we're looking at why consistent units must be used for all measures This one seems obvious and trivial, but that doesn't always translate on a practical level when we're thinking about how we want our work items and the planning around them to look. This assumption comes down to deciding what unit...

It's time to unpack another assumption of Little's Law, and this time we're looking at how and why the average age of WIP must not be meaningfully changing. This is probably one of the most misunderstood assumptions because people think everything must be the same size. But the key to remember here is the word "average." Little’s Law needs the average age to stay level— not e...

We've been working our way through a series on the assumptions of Little's Law, and this episode is about the importance of keeping your WIP constant in your system as a whole. Little’s Law doesn’t tell you the right amount of WIP—it just wants it to be stable so that you're pulling work at the same rate that work is completed. This way, your system stays flowing and is neither underwo...

When a card gets pulled to work on, that should mean that the team is committing to not only starting it but also (and more importantly) finishing it. Now, we all know that it's not always that simple. Blockers happen, new priorities come down the management pipeline, and, unfortunately, cards in progress are forgotten or pushed backward into the backlog. But at the end of the day, your team i...

When people say they want to start increasing their agility or do more Agile software development, they almost automatically start with Scrum. But the problem is that they're not asking whether Scrum is actually the right framework to use for their specific scenario. In this episode, host Phil Ledgerwood goes over the indicators that tell you if Scrum can be helpful for your team, or if it&#39...

We all know keeping our WIP limited is a good thing—Scrum does it with a Goal and timebox, and Kanban does it with a stated limit. But are you paying attention to your arrival rate and departure rate? In other words, are you starting new items at the same frequency that you’re finishing them?  In this episode learn why you should care about and control how often we start new things—because it has...

Everyone says they have a software development team, but do you really? Or is it just a group of individuals who kind of work together? Software development is a team sport. We want to be operating as a team—not a group of many silos. And as more and more software teams are no longer co-locating, having intentional and real team dynamics is even more important now than ever. In this episode, Host...

There are a lot of different metrics out there for keeping track of your team's workflow. But in this episode, we're sharing the three metrics that we find valuable to keep an eye on and some ideas on how to use them for your own team—not just for planning purposes but also for good discussion on how your team can improve.

What outcome are you expecting from Agility? This is the most important question for organizations and teams to be asked when it comes to using Agile methods, but it's also commonly overlooked. And, of course, that leads to missed expectations—like a team increasing their responsiveness when all they really wanted to do was go faster. To know you're using the right method, you have to make...

Everyone has had their own path that introduced them to agility, and that path shapes the way we see and interact with the concept in our roles today. In this episode, Host Phil Ledgerwood takes a brief walk down memory lane and shares how his path led him to his mindset on agile. His biggest takeaway? Whatever you’re sold on today, be ready to leave it for something better—that's what agility...

Story points—some teams find them useful for having discussions to align their understanding of what a story entails. But the points are not actual quantities of anything. So why are so many teams still using story point velocity to forecast how much they can get done within a sprint? And why are so many people on LinkedIn so adamant about it? We're still trying to figure that out.   But in th...

While test-driven development (TDD) might seem like a technical topic, it has a profound impact on the agility of software development. This episode explores how TDD integrates testing throughout the development process, minimizes rework, lowers risk, and fosters a shared understanding of project goals among team members—ultimately creating better software for the user. Whether you're a techni...

Conway's Law says that any organization's system design reflects its communication structure. But is it really a law, or is it more of an observation?   Conway's Law is often misused by consultants attempting to create a mechanistic relationship between organizational and software structures (i.e. if one side changes, the other side will change too). But even though Conway's Law ha...

There are a lot of people claiming to be authorities and thought leaders in the agile community sharing their take on agile practices. So what is their value and how much should we be listening to them?   Agile thought leaders have their place. But in this episode, we hope you know the value of your knowledge of your own unique set of circumstances and feel empowered to experiment and find what wo...

If you do Scrum, you know that the sprint is the heartbeat of your process. They're what many aspects of a Scrum team are based around. But Scrum often gets criticized for seemingly arbitrary time boxes around getting work done. While we usually do love an opportunity to criticize Scrum, we don't think it's exactly fair to criticize it from a flow-based methodology perspective. Scrum a...

There’s a prevalent idea that Scrum is a good way to introduce a team to agility. But at the same time, a lot of teams are really struggling with Scrum. So is Scrum really a great place to start for a team new to agility?  In this episode, hear from host Phil Ledgerwood why Scrum was created in the first place, what type of teams it was intended for, and why it's most likely not the right plac...

Oftentimes in organizations shifting to be more agile and focusing on team-oriented operations and production, the question inevitably arises, “How do we deal with individual performance?” Performance happens at various levels of an organization. To only focus on individual performance (and not the performance of the systems those individuals are working in) only tells part of the story - the leas...

The title to this episode may seem like a question with an obvious answer. But we think it's important to discuss why it's a question at all, and why somebody might even think differently about it (because there are some good reasons). The more you understand the issues associated with this question, the better off  you're going to be strategically when you try to move your own organiz...

How often does your software team do releases? And when you do, how traumatic is it? Many software teams may be agile in their workflow but still be very slow or inflexible when it comes to the actual delivery of value. But what if we told you that your release cycles are -key- to how agile your team can actually be?  In this episode, Host Phil Ledgerwood shares why the big batch and infrequent na...

So you've identified the constraint. You've optimized your constraint. You've learned to subordinate to your constraint. Assuming you haven't skipped any of these important steps (if you have, go back and listen to those episodes!), now it's time to elevate your constraint.  In this episode, host Phil Ledgerwood discusses ways to get the most efficiency out of your constraint a...

When you're starting to build an application, at what point should the database be designed? (To our non-developer listeners, hang in there—this is relevant to you!)  There are a lot of opinions on this topic in the software community, and many say the database should come first. But if you're building an application in an agile manner, why would you start with a piece of the project that...

We all know that having lots of work in process causes problems when it comes to your delivery rate.   If you're on a Scrum team, this can look like items getting carried over from sprint to sprint, nothing being ready until the very end of the sprint, no capacity to respond to emergency fixes, or every new user story taking longer and longer to complete. These can all be indicators that your...

Can you be a good scrum master or agile coach without experience in the domain you work on? There are several schools of thought when it comes to this controversial question. Some say yes, some say no, and some say that technical knowledge can actually make you worse at your job.  What should actually be the standard? Who's to say? But in this episode, we're going over the different perspe...

The title of this episode may sound counterintuitive, but it's actually the key to optimizing your team's agility. When we say “working less,” we're not talking about slacking off—we're talking about balancing your workflow by subordinating your work stages to your constraint.  Having every team member produce the most amount of work at all times seems like the fastest way complete...