Author: Maik Seyfert

It is not a secret that companies are always looking for better ways to handle their software development needs to avoid projects dragging for long periods. Agile software development is one of the most preferred ways of software development due to its dynamic development nature, whereby, requirements and solutions evolve during the entire development process. The emphasis on collaboration between different self-organizing and cross-functional teams is at the core foundation of this method. Characteristics of a good agile development team When selecting a team for agile software development, a company should ensure that at a minimum, they meet the following factors.

Throughout my agile journey I’ve experienced and facilitated many retrospective meetings for agile teams but also for long running projects. Often I’ve experienced that teams and sometimes even facilitators are not familiar with common basic structure of activities that an agile retrospective meeting should follow in order to make the meeting go smoothly and to generate qualitative action items for improvement. From my experience it helps teams a lot to when retrospectives are created along this structure of activities. The structure is published in the book Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, which I strongly recommend for anyone who is new to the subject.

As my last post was about how to write good User Stories, this post is about good structures for them. When developing products that require several team and stakeholders to collaborate, it is beneficial to have a common User Story structure so that everyone can focus on the product instead of struggling with information and requirements about it. With all the points below please remember that a User Story should be a place holder for conversations. So avoid adding all details and take away room for negotiation and conversation.

As a Product Owner I would like to know how to write good User Stories So that I can provide ideal input to teams for turning requirements into a product increment. What is an User Story? An User Story is a brief description of a certain functionality or desired feature from a user’s perspective. In an User Story these pieces of functionality or features must relate to business value. As mentioned User Stories are very brief descriptions and with that become a place holder for conversations between business people and developers When this conversations take place, knowledge is spread across all involved people and a shared understanding is the result. User Stories focus on value to be delivered to an user. …

User Stories Well Done Read more »

Most people involved in Agile Software Development are familiar with User Stories which, in it’s slimmest form, consist of a narrative and a small set of acceptance criteria. But what about Epics? What exactly is an epic and how does it distinguish from a user story, theme, initiate, spike or task? Let’s have a look what the purpose of an epic is and what it usually looks like in Agile Software Development.