Author: Maik Seyfert

Scrum is a simple and flexible software development methodology or framework. Scrum framework introduces alternatives to traditional project management systems such as Waterfall or Sequential development. In scrum we only have three roles; product owner who represents the clients or users, the scrum master who is the silent leader and the team. From my experience, additional roles are not needed since they don’t usually bring extra benefits. The Scrum framework covers all the necessary aspects for successful software and product development. Instead of additional roles it is possible to have a product owner team, where the different product owners cover different areas of the product. Depending on the degree of innovation and uncertainty in your project, this might be even …

Benefits of Adopting Scrum for Software Development Read more »

In IT as well as other areas communication or the conveyance of information is an important factor. As you might have experienced yourself, communication in general is an error-prone thing. Misunderstandings and perceptions occur regularly and have an impact. Wrongly understood information could lead to unnecessary costs for your organization and frustration amongst staff.

Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is a method that helps to reduce meeting times and make meetings more effective. The method is nowadays widely spread since it is simple, robust and effective. With this post I want to introduce the method briefly and also tell you about some experiences I’ve made using it.

Daily stand up meetings were introduced to me together with Scrum. From my point of view having a daily stand up meeting is a very good idea for coordinating and planning the day. Since it makes a difference whether your daily stand up meeting is effective or not, I want to share some thoughts on that subject.

Planning Poker is an estimation technique often used in agile software development. All Scrum teams I’ve worked with or met at gatherings know planning poker and use it on their projects. So I assume it is very widely spread. However, often enough I’ve seen that Planning Poker isn’t played the right way. There are certain rules for playing Planning Poker that need to be respected in order to get the full benefit of playing it. Team members reveal their estimation to each other before everyone has made an estimate for themselves. In case Story Points are used, there is often a debate about Story Points interfering the actual estimation and exchange of information in Planning Poker. This is just two of the …

How To Play Planning Poker Right Read more »