Estimation has been officially removed from Scrum (see new Scrum Guide). Good, because people are way too obsessed with it.

Check out this thread for a non-obsessed and effective approach. 1/n
1. Slice a minimum functional implementation to deliver a useful capability to a customer
2. If number of stories > number delivered in last sprint, check again to see if you can slice further (many functional and technical slicing techniques for this)
2/n
3. Be ok with the fact it might take 2 or 3 sprints to deliver something you want to actually release to a customer; don't bring more stories into a single sprint than you have proven you can deliver
3/n
4. If you complete the sprint goal early, and no other refactoring is required to maximise quality, you can pull in another story

Slicing stories this way enables you to count them rather than need an arbitrary abstraction like story points.
4/n
Also, stories which add functionality to the product (and value to customers) is a currency both biz folks and devs alike understand. And will invariably be a more reliable predictor of capacity than SPs (calculate past 6 sprints' Coefficient of Variance for both to confirm).
5/5
PS - when I say "slice further", that doesn't mean "create MORE stories". That means be more precise about the target customer, capability and channel of an existing story such that you can reduce the scope of what you previously thought was your "minimum".

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More from @neil_killick

6 Sep 20
Sometimes I write a lot of explanatory and other documentation, mainly because it helps ME distil and understand what I'm doing. This docco may or may not help anyone else, but the fact it helped me makes it valuable. 1/
How does this sit with "we value working software over comprehensive documentation?" If I am building a software product, I would never make documentation a bottleneck. I would write just enough such that my team and I know what we're doing, & could hand over to another team. 2/
So what am I getting at? The manifesto authors were talking about documentation /milestones/, not in general. They value a working product over an FRD. It's important to embrace rather than demonise documentation. Even if it's not useful to you, it might be to someone else. 3/
Read 4 tweets
23 Mar 20
This thread is a letter from a school principal (and something to keep in mind over the coming weeks).
“Dear Parents,
You might be inclined to create a minute by minute schedule for your kids. 1/n
You have high hopes of hours of learning, including online activities, science experiments, and book reports. You’ll limit technology until everything is done! But here’s the thing...
Our kids are just as scared as we are right now.
2/n
Our kids not only can hear everything that is going on around them, but they feel our constant tension and anxiety. They have never experienced anything like this before.
3/n
Read 10 tweets
31 Oct 19
Prominent experts still saying that planning equates to looking forward to a date and "making a prediction of what would be delivered by then". No! Planning is figuring out what you need to DO to meet an objective. Any "prediction" you want to take from that is a by-product. 1/
This expert's line of reasoning is like saying "it will be a 5 hour drive" equates to planning a road trip. No! Which car should we use? What do we need? What roads will we take? Where should we turn? What is the best time to leave? Where should we stop? *That's* planning. 2/
Proper planning, done frequently, is so critical to an incremental and iterative way of working. But it seems folks are still being told to predict things as the focus of their planning activity rather than to actually plan how to do the work to meet the objective. 3/
Read 9 tweets
25 Sep 18
Any imposed process, explicit (e.g. you must do standups) or implicit (e.g. you must do #agile) is likely to result in anything ranging from low performance to dysfunction. 1/
High performance comes from imposing enabling constraints (e.g. ensure we have a shippable product at all times, ensure we have a frequent feedback loop with the customer, ensure you are continuously improving), not process. 2/
Tell the team they can create whatever process they want, and that you will help remove any roadblocks. But take the constraints seriously, and make the team accountable to them. Show me the software! Show me how we're incorporating feedback! Show me how you're improving! 3/
Read 4 tweets
5 Jul 18
For questions about practices in #Scrum, there are only ever TWO answers. If the context of the question is about the framework itself, and thus the Scrum Guide explicitly answers it, then there's your answer. For all other questions, the answer is "it depends on the context".
For example, I just saw a question in a #Scrum Master group: "What is the role of the PO in daily standup?" A long thread of opinionated answers ensued. NO! If you're a Scrum Master, & you are using Scrum, the answer is simple - it's the "daily scrum", & it is for the developers.
"But sometimes it is very valuable to have the PO at the standup!", freshly minted CSM's cry. "They can share new bugs with the team, sign off stories and understand progress / get the team back on track". Sigh. NO! IT IS FOR THE DEVELOPERS. READ THE GUIDE!
Read 9 tweets
20 Apr 18
Trying a new angle for teaching story slicing, one of the biggest struggles for teams attempting #agile ways of working and arguably the most important practice to understand, given we are trying to deliver value to customers in very short cycles. Read on if you are interested.
The way I see it, there are 3 levels of story slicing, each of which is beneficial and necessary to be able to deliver shippable increments consistently in 2 wks or less. I am currently calling them Capability Slicing, Functional Slicing and Implementation Slicing. What are they?
Capability Slicing is the narrowing of a broader capability* into more precise ones, each independently valuable and implementable and, by necessity, smaller in potential scope.

*The story of enabling a human being to achieve something they cannot currently achieve
Read 13 tweets

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